


Shelter

by dirty_diana



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Daxam, F/M, Krypton, Krypton vs Daxam, Miscommunication, Opposites Attract, social unrest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 23:15:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12592708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirty_diana/pseuds/dirty_diana
Summary: Mon-El of Daxam and Kara Zor-El of Krypton are total strangers to each other when they are roped into a political marriage intended to unite their star system. Their planets share a history of many thousands of years of war and distrust, but now Kara and Mon-El are going to have to put prejudices and cultural miscommunication aside if this is going to work.They're trying.





	Shelter

**Author's Note:**

> [This story mostly takes place on Daxam. There's going to be fascism and terrorism and persecution of a religious minority, but no explicit violence.
> 
> Contains an incredibly, incredibly mild version of imperative sexual biology. And Mon-El sleeping with other people, because Daxam.]
> 
> I do realise that because of Phantom Zone stuff Mon-El and Kara weren't actually the same age before their system's destruction. I'm handwaving it. I also decided not to worry too much about casual language - they're speaking Kryptonian/Daxamite anyway, so I'm assuming local equivalents for slang and time-related terminology.
> 
> Very helpfully beta'd by llaras and anoyo. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Beautiful art by mekare found here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12594104)

MON-EL: Who would have thought? A girl from Krypton and a boy from Daxam.  
KARA: Why? Is it because you come from a planet of partiers?  
MON-EL: No, because you come from a planet of snobs.

Supergirl 2.05 Crossfire

*

"Var-Eth. What is it?"

The Royal Guardsman had entered the prince's bedroom silently and waited to be acknowledged. The woman in Mon-El's arms stirred, rubbing her naked body against his, but Var-Eth did not blink an eye. "Prince Mon-El. Your mother wishes to see you." 

The woman tugged on the bedsheets and frowned unhappily at the blankets, but if she had an opinion about Rhea of Daxam she wisely kept it to herself.

"Now?" Mon-El asked. "Can't it wait?"

Var-Eth's expression subtly fell, the way it often did when he had an opinion but did not wish to argue. "The king is with her, Your Highness."

Meaning that Var-Eth thought it was likely urgent, and Mon-El would regret making the king and queen wait. He had no idea what could possibly be happening now, in the early morning, but he trusted the elder guard's judgement. Mon-El had no desire to start the day by irritating his mother.

*

The rose dawn light crept along the stone walls of the place. Mon-El traced his way through the curving, maze-like halls in a hurry, still pulling yesterday's shirt over his head as he moved. 

Var-Eth kept pace just a few steps behind. Mon-El paused in front of the entrance to his parent's stateroom. He smoothed down the wrinkles in his clothing with both hands, cocking an eyebrow at the man who had watched over him almost as far back as Mon-El's memory could go.

"Var-Eth. If I don't come back--"

"I'll avenge you in the name of the gods, Your Highness." He bowed slightly, wearing a familiar deadpan expression.

Mon-El grinned at him. "Enter," he said aloud, and the stateroom door slid open.

*

"Mon-El." His mother was scowling when he entered the room, but for once it wasn't at him. The hologram in front of her glowed dully, the colours refracted and bouncing off her skin. Rhea paced around it, studying the image from all sides.

The hologram was a map, a changing display with Daxam always at the centre. Rhea spoke a word under her breath, and the map shifted. Faraway stars disappeared, revealing a familiar image, the sphere of Daxam circling a red sun. Next to it was the planet Krypton, following its own elliptical path around the central star. While his mother's attention was held by the map, his father stood by the window, lost in thought. At this angle, the view beyond the palace was dominated by the monument that sat in the centre of the city. It had been standing there for many cycles, built by a distant ancestor. A tribute to their family's glory, his father often said.

Privately, Mon-El thought it was far too ugly to be glorious.

Mon-El shifted awkwardly where he stood. "Mother. Father. You requested me?"

"Mon-El." Lar Gand appeared to pull his mind back from wherever it had wandered. "We bring good news. The negotiations with the Kryptonians have ended."

His mother scoffed. "Negotiations, he says. Everyone knows that Kryptonians cannot be reasoned with."

"Yet you persuaded them," his father pointed out.

"The Kryptonians are stubborn, but not so stupid that they cannot see the benefits an alliance with us will provide."

Mon-El started, blinking in plain shock. He'd heard nothing of any negotiations. The Kryptonians were known to be a smug nuisance, unwilling to join forces with the foreign civilisations they looked down upon as morally inferior. "Alliance?" he repeated.

His father smiled, spreading his arms wide. "Better than an alliance. A union."

Mon-El's heart twisted, thudding hard against his ribcage. He struggled to keep his dismay from his face. "You mean a marriage."

"Of course," Rhea said, frowning at him. "Allies come and go, but a marriage union joins our interests permanently."

"The Kryptonians have no monarchy." The Kryptonians were not the only aliens who ruled by a sort of haphazard public committee, but Mon-El found it all baffling. "If they have no prince or princess, whom am I to wed?"

"The girl's name is Kara Zor-El. She is a daughter of one of the most respected noble houses on Krypton." 

This, at least, made sense to him. "You mean they're rich."

His father's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Perhaps. I believe they are primarily famed for having produced a great many bureaucrats."

"How exciting." 

His father eyed him cynically. "I expect you will be more diplomatic than that, when you meet the girl. Your ship leaves tomorrow morning."

"You are sending me to Krypton," Mon-El said. His mind was whirling. "To be married. Tomorrow?"

His mother rolled her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. You will be properly married, here on Daxam."

"For now, the girl wishes to meet you. The Kryptonians insisted, I'm afraid." Lar Gand shrugged.

"Do not embarrass us," his mother added. Then she turned away, with nothing further to say.

*

Every Daxamite could remain single only as long as it pleased their parents, and no longer. As Lar Gand's only child, Mon-El's status was a tool, as flexible as any other. When it came to his parents Mon-El held no misconceptions.

Mon-El wasn't surprised, but he simply hadn't expected his betrothal to happen so soon. Or to a Kryptonian. Of all the beings in the galaxy, he'd thought that his parents hated the Kryptonians the most.

"Nothing to add, Var-Eth?" Mon-El asked the guard. He was reclining in his outer rooms, watching as half a dozen of the palace's slaves hurried to pack his baggage. His best clothes were laid carefully into wide trunks. 

Var-Eth shrugged. "It could be worse. You could be betrothed to a Rhilean. I hear their women get quite enthusiastic in bed. Violently so."

"I think I'd prefer sex injuries over being lectured to death."

"She's a Kryptonian. They like science, and other, hmmn, irrelevancies." Var-Eth shrugged. "It should be easy enough to keep her distracted, and out of your hair."

Mon-El arched his eyebrows at his stoic guard. "Are you telling me I'll have to make the best of it?"

"Your Highness, I would never dream of telling you something which you already know."

Mon-El sighed. Var-Eth was right, but that didn't stem his irritation. "Do you think the servants have packed enough wine?"

Gossip always spread through the Daxamite nobility with the speed of a shuttle leaving orbit. By the time the sun had set, there was a parade of old friends at his door bearing a mixture of sympathy and congratulations. It wasn't long before Mon-El was morosefully drunk, determined not to worry about the future that had changed overnight.

*

The next morning he was mostly sober, blinking in the face of a sharp coastal wind as he waited to board the ship bound for Krypton. He stood braced against the scowling disapproval of his father. His belongings had been carried by transmatter beam into the Glory, the small instellar cruise ship that was Mon-El's transportation. His servants had followed, and now Mon-El was the last to embark. He stood in the courtyard with his guards, watching his father's stormy expression.

"You were meant to leave an hour ago."

Mon-El simply nodded, knowing that arguing would be fruitless. "Yes, Father."

"The Kryptonians will disapprove of your lateness."

"The Kryptonians will probably disapprove of everything I do," Mon-El answered, and he couldn't help the note of childish frustration that crept into his voice. "I don't understand why she could not come to Daxam."

His father studied him carefully, sighing before he answered. "You are a symbol of our trustworthiness and faith in this alliance."

Mon-El tried to push down the faint, fresh wave of alarm that swept over him. "Speak plainly, Father. Am I a hostage?"

Lar Gand's green eyes flashed with unexpected steel. "The Kryptonians will hold up their end, or they will regret it. Marriage is a series of compromises, son. Best that you start getting used to it."

Mon-El found his father's answer was neither reassuring nor clarifying, but he knew better than to keep asking questions. Lar Gand embraced him tightly as they said goodbye, and then the order was given. The palace, his father, and the familiar red sky all faded away.

When the Glory broke orbit, arcing over Daxam's north pole and towards the sun, Krypton came quickly into view through the windows of his cabin. At this distance Krypton was a tiny patch of pale blue, barely larger than the dots of light shed by faraway stars.

"Ship, estimated time to Krypton."

"Estimated travel time to Krypton is eleven hours."

"Close window," Mon-El said, and the viewing screens in his cabin faded to black. 

*

"They're going to _what_?"

The Daxamite ambassador to Krypton was a small, dark-haired woman, barely older than he was and unusually young for her post. She'd beamed up with a small entourage of civilian workers, both Daxamite and Kryptonian, and now she paced uneasily across the floor of the ship's embarkment bay. She wore traditional Daxamite jewelry, ornate metal bracelets that jangled as she moved. They were the only hint of foreignness worn over clothing that would have marked her as a Kryptonian, if Mon-El hadn't known better. Shal-Ut stared at him with dark eyes and a stern expression as if she argued with royalty every day.

"Confiscate the ydux, Your Highness. They say the wine is permissible if it remains within our embassy, but potent drugs may not touch Kryptonian soil."

"Shal-Ut, I am the prince of Daxam," Mon-El said, though he already suspected the words would not carry as much weight as they did back home. He flashed the ambassador his most winning smile, and tried again. "There has to be some wiggle room?"

The ambassador's brow furrowed. The sceptical frown on her face made clear how likely she thought the Kryptonians were to relax their rules, on this or anything. "There was, previously, a royal exception. Unfortunately a Daxamite was caught using the opportunity to smuggle unacceptable contraband onto Kryptonian soil."

Contraband. She meant slaves, Mon-El guessed. "But--"

Despite her youth, Shal-Ut's voice remained resolute. "Your Highness, please. I have been asked to make sure the next two weeks go as smoothly as possible."

Var-Eth moved to stand by his side. "Of course, Ambassador. We will send the ydux back to Daxam."

"Maybe I should go with it," Mon-El said, only half-joking. The returning laughter was thin, and unconvincing.

It was not a hopeful welcome.

*

The Daxamite embassy sat in the heart of the city. The building had the familiar square corners and sloping roofs Mon-El was used to at home, but just past the walls, everything was alien. Tall crystal and metal spires sparkled, built into steep inclines, reaching up towards the hazy pink glow of the sun. 

The embassy had been standing here in Argo City since the end of the last Krypton-Daxam war, almost a thousand years ago. Though judging by the carefully tended war memorial in the garden, memories were as long here as they were at home. The ambassador walked him around the grounds, an estate that sprawled for a city block, talking as she walked. She identified the tallest buildings visible on the skyline in careful detail. Mon-El was barely listening.

"Have you met her?" he asked Shal-Ut abruptly.

Shal-Ut broke off from her explanation of Kryptonian architecture. "Your Highness?"

"The Kryptonian. Zor-El. Have you met her?"

"Ah. No."

"Too bad. I was wondering if she was attractive. Have you met her parents?"

Shal-Ut nodded. "A few times. Her mother is a member of the judiciary, so Alura Zor-El attends many--"

"Are the parents attractive? I mean, would you want to bed them," Mon-El clarified, when Shal-Ut didn't answer.

"I suppose if it were an option," Shal-Ut said, the sentence trailing off uncertainly.

"Shal-Ut," Mon-El began, and the ambassador flinched. He sighed. "I am not my parents. I won't have you strung up in the street because I don't like what you say. Spit it out. Please," he added, as an afterthought.

"Your Highness, I worry you are focusing on the wrong things."

Mon-El made an amused face, grinning playfully, but Shal-Ut's serious expression didn't crack. "Okay, then. What should I be focusing on?"

"The Kryptonians' ways are not our ways."

"Everyone in the galaxy knows that, Shal-Ut."

"The Kryptonians' ways are not our ways," the ambassador repeated firmly. "Your first meeting with Kara Zor-El is important. If she rejects you, it will damage relations between our planets for years."

And it would be an embarrassment to his parents, Shal-Ut didn't add. His mother would never forgive him. The possibility had never occurred to him, and Mon-El frowned. "You think she'll disobey her parents?"

"I think you should have read the agreement, sir," Shal-Ut answered shortly. Then her eyes widened, as she realised what she'd said.

Mon-El shook off her rudeness, laughing. "Well, enlighten me. What does it say?"

"That Kara Zor-El has the final word. Kryptonian parents would not force a child to do anything she doesn't want to do."

That sounded nice, Mon-El thought. If somewhat unworkable. He flashed a wide grin at Shal-Ut, placing a hand on her shoulder. "There's nothing to worry about. Women love me."

A bird swooped towards them, wings flapping as it found a perch on the war monument. It sat still long enough for the names of a dozen fallen soldiers to scroll past the holoscreen, then squawked rudely and flew away. 

*

"Var-Eth, tell the truth. Am I getting fat?"

The guard paused in the doorway of Mon-El's embassy quarters, one eyebrow raised. Mon-El's valet moved to stand at the prince's back, tugging at Mon-El's stiff, stubborn formal clothing.

Var-Eth cast an eye down Mon-El's form. "That's certainly not what the ladies of the nobility say. If I didn't know better, Your Highness, I'd think you were nervous."

"I'm just not looking forward to spending the evening in a room full of Kryptonians. I'll be glad when we can go home." Mon-El tugged impatiently on his sleeves. "Was I that drunk last night, or was the ground actually shaking?"

"It's a hazard of Kryptonian geography, Shal-Ut tells me. Disconcerting, but usually harmless." The guard shrugged.

"Great. I'm surrounded by Kryptonian snobs, and now I might die in a quake."

"I can't do much about the seisms. But I did hang on to a little piece of home." Var-Eth reached into his pocket, pulling out a flat, square box. He flipped it open, revealing half a dozen pieces of ydux that sat inside. Ydux was also the name of the plant, common in the Daxamite islands and processed into chewy squares.

Mon-El grinned, pleased. "Var-Eth, if we get kicked off of this planet, I'm blaming you."

Var-Eth smiled back. "As you always do."

Mon-El reached out for the biggest piece, popped it in his mouth, and began to chew the bitter cake. The tingle at the back of his mouth was pleasantly familiar. Perhaps, he thought, this evening wouldn't be so bad after all.

*

By the time he arrived at the party, Mon-El's head was buzzing comfortably. The music stuttered to a stop as he entered, and then Mon-El was lost in a flurry of formal introductions. The Chancellor of Krypton, and his tall, scowling wife. Twenty-three councillors in dark clothing with serious faces, whom Mon-El knew he had no hope of telling apart. He bowed to each, smiling carefully. 

And finally, a brown-haired couple who were introduced as the scientist Zor-El and his wife, Alura. They each exchanged greetings in rough but serviceable Daxamite, and then Shal-Ut was tugging on his arm, whispering 'Kara Zor-El' in his ear.

There was a beat of silence, as if the room were holding its collective breath. Mon-El wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn't quite this pretty, yellow-haired alien who gazed at him guilelessly.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Mon-El said, automatically.

Kara Zor-El nodded, though her stiff shoulders and wary stare suggested that she wasn't certain it was a pleasure. "Likewise. Prince Mon-El."

She pronounced the last syllable of his name in the Kryptonian way, drawing the consonant slowly across her tongue. It was oddly charming, and Mon-El decided not to correct her. 

"This is, uh. Awkward." He smiled his most charming smile, and took her hand. Kara Zor-El tilted her head at him curiously, but didn't flinch away. "Is there somewhere we could talk?"

Kara glanced back at her parents, and then nodded. Mon-El followed her across the dance floor and through an arched doorway. In the courtyard beyond stood a few scattered lights, flames rising out of thin pillars that tilted towards them as they walked. 

"They call this the Chancellor's fountain," she told him. Her Daxamite was hesitant and strongly accented, the grammar slightly mixed up, but her meaning was clear.

Mon-El frowned into the wide stone basin, glancing back at her. "Fountain?" There was no water. Instead the torchlights scattered off millions of grains of dark sand, flowing through a complicated series of rivets and spigots in a neverending loop.

She nodded earnestly, and the conversation stuttered to a halt. Kara stood by the dry fountain, fidgeting with the long sleeves on her gown and watching him warily.

"Let me guess," Mon-El said into the strangled silence. "You've heard that Daxamites are highly dangerous." He pulled a dramatic face, miming a battle stance.

That pulled a smile out of her, bright and genuine. She sat down, balancing herself on the stone ledge of the fountain. "Maybe so, but, um. I'm not supposed to talk about what I've heard about Daxamites. I promised my uncle."

Mon-El sat down beside her, nodding. "Stay away from controversial topics. Good idea." Mon-El paused, casting about for a safe subject. "Do you follow garatta?"

"I'm not very interested in sports," Kara said. Her tone was politely apologetic, but her face didn't quite match, her nose wrinkling. "Do you play?"

"As often as I can. I've even got a move named after me back home. I make a reverse pass, my mount feints left, then flies right. Just in time to catch the ball again, then bam!"

Mon-El leapt to his feet on the edge of the fountain, spreading his arms wide as he began a demonstration. He clapped his hands together, then found himself spinning off-balance. He teetered, with a lack of grace his combat tutor had always despaired of, and then slipped sideways into the fountain pool.

"Mon-El!" Kara shouted his name, stretching out a hand as Mon-El flailed and struggled to right himself. The basin was deeper than it looked, and it took several awkward tries to regain his balance.

He sputtered, mouth full of sand, then began to laugh. He ignored her offer of help, waving his hands through the sand. Then laughed again, as a large spray of sand flew in Kara's direction.

Kara withdrew her hand, stepping backwards in alarm. "Are you--intoxicated?"

"That's got to be on the list of things you aren't supposed to talk to me about," Mon-El answered as he clambered out of the fountain, stumbling and barely managing to stay on his feet.

Kara's eyes widened. Mon-El wondered idly how she got by in life, with a face that gave away everything she was thinking. "Rao. You are."

Mon-El shrugged, the movement scattering the grains of sand that clung to his clothing. "I have more," he offered. "It might make this party more interesting."

"Intoxicants are for unprincipled hedonists," Kara told him. She sounded like she was quoting someone. Someone who never had any fun, Mon-El thought.

He shrugged. "Well, we can't all be close-minded and backwards."

"Backwards!" Kara shouted at him.

"You think prohibition's so modern?" 

"At least we don't condone slavery."

He'd known the topic would come up sooner or later, and he couldn't help rolling his eyes. "Well. That was fast."

Kara leaned forward, her eyes sparking with anger. They were blue and bright, and perversely Mon-El found this was the most entertained he'd been in weeks. "If you're not going to take this seriously, then why are you even here?"

"I may be unprincipled, but I understand what a contract is. I'm here to honour an agreement our parents made."

Kara glared at him, plainly struggling to master her frustration, and Mon-El stared evenly back at her. He caught her barely-disguised flinch at the mention of his parents, and prepared himself for a fresh barrage of insults. Mon-El knew his parents' reputations. 

Instead Kara Zor-El threw up her hands, scowling, then turned and walked away. Mon-El watched her leave in silence, shaking the sand out of his sleeves.

"That could have gone better." Var-Eth had materialised at his left side, barely holding back laughter.

*

"Windows open."

Mon-El awoke abruptly, with a stripe of the hot morning sun on his face. Shal-Ut was standing over him, bracelets jangling, holding a holographic reader crystal in her hands. "Shal-Ut." Mon-El sat up, eyeing her cautiously. "Uh, good morning? Where are my guards?"

Shal-Ut glared at him. "Outside, where you left them. What did you tell Zor-El?"

Mon-El winced at the ambassador's short tone, but didn't bother to rebuke her. "That she's from a idiotic, backwards planet? Which she is."

"Not that. Did you tell her that you were being forced into this marriage?" 

He frowned, thinking back. He remembered furious eyes, and falling into the fountain. He still had sand between his fingernails, but the rest of the evening was a blur. "Of all the things I said, that's what upset her?" 

"I did advise you to be charming," Shal-Ut reminded him, shooting him an unsympathetic look.

"Yeah. You didn't advise me to lie," Mon-El pointed out, then flinched as Shal-Ut thrust a holocrystal into his hands, the display activating immediately.

"Zor-El sent you this. Some babbling about choices, and reason. Typical Kryptonian nonsense. She's referencing their holy book, if I'm not mistaken. If you need help composing a suitable reply," her sceptical, dismissive tone said that she thought he certainly would, "then my secretary is available."

She turned and stalked out of the room.

The note had been written in Kryptonian, and translated into Daxamite by Shal-Ut's holoreader. It was kindly phrased, almost flowery in its politeness. Mon-El read it twice, and then sighed, pushing away the unexpected twinge of disappointment that pulled at him. 

He put the holocrystal down on the floor, next to another empty bottle of wine, and stretched his limbs across the bed. Mon-El yawned. "Windows closed."

*

"My apologies for the confusion this morning, Your Highness."

Var-Eth had been with him since he was fourteen. Through several kidnapping attempts, an uncounted number of brawls, and one unexpected riot abroad, but he couldn't be Mon-El's shield at every moment. Emisaries bearing bad news were outside of his usual jurisdiction, and Mon-El shrugged. 

He was sitting down to his first meal of the day in the embassy garden. It seemed the sun was overhead for most of the day here, the sky busy with shuttles whether it was early or late. He dragged a spoon through his dessert, dotted with sweet Kryptonian fruits, and poured himself another cup of wine. "When will the Glory be here?"

Var-Eth's subtle pause warned Mon-El that his day was not about to improve. "I am instructed by the queen to inform you that the Glory will arrive in thirteen days to bring you home, as previously agreed."

Mon-El groaned.

"And she looks forward to hearing of your success when you return."

His mother, he thought, never knew when to give up a bad idea. "In the meantime can we organise a game of garatta? And women." He thought of Kara Zor-El, scowling intently in the firelight. "This planet must have some women that aren't, uh, perpetually miserable."

"I'll look into it, sir."

Mon-El nodded, and went back to his meal, forgetting about the letter completely.

*

"Your Highness."

"Shal-Ut!" Mon-El protested, as the woman in his lap squeaked in surprise and leaped to cover herself, reaching for the dress she'd discarded on his floor. Shal-Ut paid her no attention, glaring sharp daggers at Mon-El instead. "You can't keep barging into my rooms. Unless you'd like to join--"

"No, thank you." Shal-Ut gave a cursory bow. "Have you contacted Kara Zor-El?"

He sighed, glancing over at the woman beside him. She was H'lai, with a typically unpronounceable name, and the telltale pale bone ridges running across her shoulders and back. "I need five minutes," he told her in H'lai, brushing a kiss on the bone ridges running down the nape of her neck. Then watched as she shrugged and disappeared into the inner bedroom.

"Well?" Shal-Ut asked.

Mon-El made a face. "What would be the point?"

She spat out a guttural series of curses that Mon-El couldn't follow. It was Lower Daxamite, by the sound of it, a language spoken in the streets but barred in the palace. Mon-El frowned, revising his original opinions about her background. For a commoner to be granted an ambassadorship was nearly unheard of.

"You're kidding," Shal-Ut said finally, when she had switched back to the High Tongue. "You don't actually know why you're here?"

"I'm here to meet a betrothed who wants nothing to do with me."

"Shit. You really don't. The Trethansi and the Thanagarians make an alliance surely intended to crush us, and you sit here, drunk." She punctuated her sentence by kicking the nearest carafe of wine. The bottle toppled over, spilling the dregs onto the floor, and Mon-El winced. They'd almost reached the end of their supply, and now it would still be another ten days before he could return to Daxam.

"The Trethansi," he repeated in surprise. "And the Thanagarians?"

Shal-Ut tilted her head as she stared at him, as if trying to figure out if he might be joking. The scrutiny stretched on for a moment before she finally relented.

"A month ago, according to the Intelligence Office," she explained. "Perhaps it is nothing, but Their Highnesses do not wish to be caught off guard."

"No, they wouldn't," Mon-El agreed. And if those old, warmongering civilisations could put their local grudges aside, his parents would not want it said that they had done any less. "What about the Kryptonians?"

"What about them?"

"They've been at peace with the Trethansi for dozens of cycles. What do they want with this alliance?"

Shal-Ut raised her brows, staring at him in frank, unflattering surprise. "That's a good question," she admitted, finally. "Perhaps you should ask her."

*

When the shuttle landed, engines groaning gently before turning silent, Mon-El first thought it must be a mistake. The building was low and squat, hidden amongst the skyscrapers of Astro City. It could easily have gone unnoticed, sitting at the bottom of a steep, crystal-paved incline at the end of a dead-end street. 

He stepped on the lift platform that would take him to the third floor. When he stepped off, there was an open room. Dozens of Kryptonians sat at long, square desks, talking softly into the displays of holocrystals as they worked. Fifty pairs of eyes turned to Mon-El as he entered, studying the alien intruder in cold curiosity. Both of his guards trailed behind him.

His eyes swept the room, searching for Kara Zor-El, but she found him first.

"Mon-El?" There was a holocrystal idle in her hands, and an older Kryptonian woman standing beside her.

"Kara?" the woman demanded imperiously, in a tone that suggested she was accustomed to being in charge. "Who is this?"

"Uh, nobody," Kara stuttered. "I mean, obviously he's somebody, but. Nobody important?"

"That's probably true," Mon-El agreed smoothly, "but here I am anyway. I was hoping we could talk."

Kara's eyes widened. "Wait. You speak Kryptonian?"

Charming, Mon-El reminded himself, and gritted his teeth into what wasn't quite a smile. "I'm not completely uneducated. Yes. I speak Kryptonian. This is a nice, uh, office." Mon-El wasn't sure he'd ever been in one before, and didn't have anything to compare it to, but his father had always advised him to begin aggravating situations with a compliment.

Kara eyed him warily, then nodded. "Thank you."

"Kara, I expect that story by tomorrow," the older woman said, shooting Mon-El a last suspicious glance as she walked away.

"I was surprised when Ambassador Shal-Ut told me that you work here."

"Why wouldn't I? The news service is important," Zor-El told him. She was bristling defensively, hunching her shoulders forward.

He'd meant that he was surprised she worked at all. Mon-El thought better of explaining himself. "I just didn't know you were a writer."

"You didn't ask," she pointed out, tone clipped.

"No. You left much too quickly for--" Mon-El made a motion with his right hand in imitation of a speeding shuttle, then cut himself off as he caught her glare. "I mean, I'm sure there's a lot that I don't know about you."

They were still being watched by every being nearby, and Kara shifted on her heels, glancing uncertainly around the room. "Yeah. I have to go back to work."

"Surely you can take a break--"

"No?" Kara answered with a scowl, her voice rising. Then she sighed, relenting. "Look, do you want to come to dinner? Tomorrow, at my parents' house. We can talk there."

"It would be an honour," Mon-El said, sweeping his arms out to his sides in an exaggerated formal bow. Kara's returning expression was almost a smile.

*

When he returned to the embassy, their shuttle's usual landing pad outside the gate was blocked by a small throng of Kryptonians. Mon-El leaned outside of the vehicle's window to take a closer look, confused by the sight of dozens of Kryptonians walking silently in circles below. Their pilot had brought the shuttle in as low as he safely could, and now it hovered only a few paces off the ground.

"What's going on?"

The grizzled, grey-haired driver shook his head. He was Kryptonian, and at least old enough to be Mon-El's grandfather. "It's a protest, sir."

Mon-El stared down at the crowd, fascinated. On Daxam, this kind of display could never last for very long. "To whom do they direct their, uh, protest?"

The old man shrugged. "Anybody that'll listen. It's symbolic, mostly."

This information did not clarify very much, Mon-El thought. "What's the subject of their grievance?"

"I guess they're worried about the rumours, Your Highness. About a treaty. And a wedding?" The driver glanced back nervously, with eyes that were barely visible in the creases of his weathered face. When no princely reprimand was forthcoming, he continued. "A lot of their ancestors will have died in the Third War of Rao."

Mon-El frowned at the driver in confusion. "In the what?"

"The Endless War of the Ninety-Second Cycle," Var-Eth muttered beside him. "This is ridiculous. Caile, come."

Var-Eth leapt down from the vehicle, landing with a thump on the ground, and the younger man who'd been seated on Mon-El's other side followed him obediently. Caile had been assigned to him less than a year. Unlike most Guardsmen he'd grown up in the city, in the shadow of the Sky Monument. He spoke with a soft Daxam City accent clipping short each of his words, in the rare times when he spoke at all.

"Var-Eth." Mon-El kept his voice low, but spoke firmly, "They're harmless civilians. Try not to start the Fourth War of Rao."

Var-Eth's hollow grimace as the only indication that he had heard the order. He walked towards the crowd, waving the weapon that he'd pulled from his belt. Caile followed, his slow steps marking his hesitation. Var-Eth's voice grew loud as he ordered the crowd to disperse in a rough combination of Kryptonian and Daxamite. Mon-El held his breath. For a moment, none of the Kryptonians moved.

Var-Eth shouted again, and the Kryptonians scattered immediately, like a pack of startled animals.

*

There was something slippery at his feet. Mon-El glanced down to find a small Kryptonian boy kneeling on the floor, watching as the goblet of water he was holding trickled steadily into a puddle. Mon-El tried to evade the mess, but the squishing sound his shoes made told him that he hadn't been fast enough.

"Kal!" 

The boy glanced up at the sound of his name with a guilty expression. He muttered something in Kryptonian that Mon-El didn't quite catch, and then scurried away, leaving tell-tale damp tracks on the floor.

Kara sighed as she approached Mon-El. She was dressed in a golden yellow gown, her hair in braids. She stood out like a newly born star next to the rest of her family, dressed in the familiar soft shades and variations of grey that most of Krypton's citizens seemed to wear. "Ignore Kal. He hasn't really met many aliens before. Dumpling?"

She held out a plate, piled high with small mounds of dough and vegetables. Mon-El frowned. "Is it the custom for Kryptonian meals to be served standing?" he asked, and Kara blushed.

"No? Not really. I was just hungry."

"Well, if we're exchanging gifts, I brought you something."

"Your mother already sent us a statue. And twelve animals. With, uh, horns?" She raised both hands to her head, jerking them back and forth in a recognisable imitation of the thoroughbred krel bulls that grazed his parents' summer house, and Mon-El laughed. "We're not really sure what we're supposed to do with them."

"Feed them four times a day," Mon-El advised her. "Otherwise they'll attack anyone they see. Here." He held out his hand.

Kara's forehead wrinkled in a way that he was starting to recognise meant she was flustered. She stared at the object in his open hand. "A holocrystal?"

"It's a book. A series of novels, actually. They're not really read much on Daxam any more. Not enough sex and death for modern tastes, but." Mon-El shrugged. "I read some of your pieces. On the news service. I thought you might like them."

Kara inclined her head, taking the holocrystal and stowing it in a hidden pocket of her gown. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"And thank you for not being drunk."

Mon-El squinted uncertainly at her. It almost sounded like a joke, but the sparkle in her eyes vanished as if it might have been a mirage. "That's not on purpose. Did you know you live on a dry planet?"

"Oh, Rao." Kara tipped a dumpling into her mouth, the motion hiding what Mon-El suspected was a smile. "Come meet my uncle Jor-El."

"Okay."

"Don't repeat that to him."

"Okay," Mon-El said again, and mimed sealing his mouth shut, covering it with his hands.

*

Mon-El had been attending state dinners since he was old enough to sit quietly. Dinner at the Els was different, and not quite what he'd been expecting. Mon-El sat beside Kara, nibbling politely at each of the alien dishes he was served.

The Els carried on as if he wasn't there. Over the clinking sounds of smooth glass plates and utensils, a conversation carried on in rapid-fire Kryptonian. Mon-El followed just enough to deduce that despite the quiet, even tones and serious faces, the conversation was some sort of argument. It sounded as if the topic was scientific, well beyond Mon-El's interest or comprehension.

Kal-El sat to his right, scowling as he kicked an irregular drumbeat against the base of his chair. Alura Zor-El sat across from him, studying him intently.

Mothers he had always been able to handle. Mon-El flashed her a smile. "Are you also a member of this, uh, Science Guild?"

"I'm a jurist." Alura's serious expression didn't change. "Not something you have much need of on Daxam, I imagine."

"Mother!" At his left side, Kara spoke with her mouth full.

"It's okay. She's not wrong. On Daxam, my parents kind of are the law." 

"And this is where the Council proposes to send my daughter?" Alura asked, fixing her future son-in-law with an unhappy stare. "To a lawless planet?"

"I didn't say lawless--"

"Mother!" Kara interrupted them, as she reached out distractedly for a second serving. "I'm not helpless. I'm not scared of going to Daxam, even if it is a violent and bloodthirsty place."

"Um." Mon-El frowned.

"Kal! Stop that!"

Mon-El glanced down, to find the chair he was sitting on smeared with the messy remains of Kal's dessert, and something sticky seeping through his pants.

*

"Does your guard have to follow you everywhere?" Kara asked, watching Var-Eth with distrust where he stood still as a stone in the kitchen doorway. The older guard had left Caile standing by the front entrance. As long as they were on Krypton, Var-Eth's paranoia was unlikely to abate, but this didn't seem like information which was likely to ease Kara's tension.

"Kind of, yeah. Why, do you want to be alone with me?"

Kara Zor-El rolled her eyes, but there was nothing mean in the gesture. "I guess I'm more used to privacy."

"Sounds like you do want to be alone with me," Mon-El said, wiggling his eyebrows at her. Kara shook her head, and went back to carefully piling the dirty dishware into the cleaning unit. Despite the number of servants visible around the El's property, Kara had volunteered them both for the task. It will be fun, she'd insisted, with a challenging grin, and Mon-El had accepted.

He still wasn't sure what was fun about assuming the tasks of a labourer, but Kara seemed oddly pleased to watch him work.

They worked in silence for a few moments. Mon-El let himself grow absorbed in the rhythm of the task, careful not to drop any of the dishware. When Kara spoke again, it caught him by surprise. Her voice was almost too soft to catch. "You looked miserable."

Mon-El looked up to find her staring at him. "I did?"

"Yeah. When I asked you what you were doing here. You looked miserable, and I don't want to be part of making anyone feel that way."

That was sweet. Inexplicable, but kind, and not the kind of thing he might have expected a Kryptonian to say. He might never understand this girl, Mon-El realised helplessly. "The gods promised us life. They didn't promise us happiness," he said, then winced as he heard the phrase out loud. It was something his father said often.

Kara frowned, but didn't reply. Most Kryptonians took their religion quite seriously, Mon-El remembered.

"It just means there's a lot of different reasons to do something. It's not something I'm very good at remembering," he admitted. "But my mother won't let this alliance go through without the marriage. It's not how we do things. Would you leave us to face this Thanagarian alliance on our own?"

"Of course not!" Kara insisted. She sounded offended. "We wouldn't just leave people to suffer, even if they're--"

Mon-El smiled, amused despite himself. "Even if they're Daxamite? Is that your Council's official position?"

Kara's uncertain shrug told him the answer. "I write. For the holoreader. If the citizens knew what was happening--"

"That's optimistic," Mon-El said, but he was smiling in earnest now. "What about you, what do you care about?"

"Queen Rhea has promised access to your science labs."

Her voice quavered slightly, and the hesitation made it sound like a lie, or only a fraction of the truth. It didn't make any sense. The Kryptonians had the most advanced science program in the sector, one they bragged about endlessly. He'd seen the building in which Kara worked, not housed with the Artist Guild to which it was nominally attached, but hidden away across town. She held no allegiance to the sciences, or their bureaucracy. Which was strange enough, for a Kryptonian. Mon-El shook his head. "That's fine. You don't have to tell me. I'll figure out your secret, Kara Zor-El."

The cup in Kara's hands slipped from her fingers, dropping soundlessly to the floor. "What? I don't have a secret."

Mon-El bent down and lifted the cup from the floor. There was now a crack in the hexagonal shape, Mon-El's reflection splitting into two. "I hope you don't gamble with that face. You'd lose every time."

The wrinkle between Kara's brows deepened into a gesture of genuine confusion. "Gambling is illegal on Krypton."

Mon-El sighed. "Is anything not illegal on Krypton?"

"Hmmn." Kara pursed her lips together playfully, as if she was seriously considering the question. "I'll let you know if I think of anything. Keep working."

*

"Congratulations on your success here," Shal-Ut said to him. "You return home with good news."

They took their lunch together in the garden. In his last day on Krypton, Mon-El could admit that the scenery of the cliffs outside the walls held its own alien charm. He shook his head. "I'd hold your congratulations until the wedding dinner, if I were you."

"Perhaps. But I think she finds you interesting. Happy marriages have been based on much less."

Mon-El thought he would be willing to settle for a marriage in which the lectures were mostly infrequent. Shal-Ut sat across the small outdoor table, cupping her soup bowl with both hands. Mon-El studied her curiously. "Do you speak from experience? Are you betrothed?"

Shal-Ut shrugged. She drew the bowl closer for a sip, bracelets jangling. "Of course. It's against Foreign Service policies to be posted off-world without a mate. She's on a shopping trip just now. Needs a break from Krypton every once in a while."

"I don't blame her."

"I've grown used to it.'

Mon-El shuddered dramatically. The ground had shaken just that morning, rocking his embassy room and jarring him out of a sound sleep. "Even the quakes?"

"Even the quakes."

Abruptly, from over the embassy wall, a small object sailed in a neat arc through the pink afternoon sky and fell at Shal-Ut's feet. She leant over to take a closer look, and was interrupted by Mon-El's younger guardsman grabbing her by the shoulders and physically moving her away. His young voice shook nervously.

"Ambassador, Your Highness. Please step back."

"Caile, stop being so dramatic. It's just a holocrystal." Mon-El ignored the order, waving his hand over the crystal object. A projected image appeared in the ray of light, and Caile studied it without comprehension. He was a couple of years shy of Mon-El's own twenty-six, but his round features often made him seem much younger.

"It's in Kryptonian," he declared.

"Obviously." Mon-El studied the hovering text. "A challenge to the unfaithful -- is that us?"

Shal-Ut read the treatise in silence, and then shook her head. "It mentions Their Majesties, but also the Kryptonian ruling council. They believe their planet has been sold to invaders."

Caile shifted his body until he was on the edge of a fighting stance, his hands hovering over the weapons he wore at his waist. "These Kryptonians cannot insult the queen! If they desire a challenge, they will find us ready."

"Or perhaps we'll just let trouble lie," Mon-El waved his hand over the holocrystal again, and the image winked into nothing. "I've been on this miserable planet long enough."

*

"I knew you would be successful," Rhea said when he returned to Daxam. Her tone clearly indicated she'd known no such thing.

"Is she attractive?" was all that his father wanted to know.

"Father, I know Shal-Ut sent pictures of our meeting."

"Pictures don't always tell the whole story," his father answered, face creasing in a lecherous wink. "I was quite relieved, when I first met your mother."

Rhea's mouth pulled back in a grimace, but she wore a tolerant smile behind her eyes. "Lar Gand, stop being ridiculous. Mon-El, the new tailor will arrive tomorrow to begin your wedding suits."

Mon-El narrowed his eyes in a flash of worry. "I already have a tailor. What happened to him?"

"Nothing happened to him! For goodness' sake, Mon-El. I was told this man is quite a talent, so I had him retrieved from the North Coast."

"Yes, mother."

"And try not to be too difficult about it. We don't have a lot of time."

*

"What was it like?" 

His friends had thrown a celebration of his return to Daxam, a raucous party that no doubt still raged in the palace gardens and spilled out into the streets. Mon-El had taken his leave early, in the company of his friend Esri. They'd brought along another girl, an acquaintance of Esri's with long dark hair and easy, bubbly laughter. After sex she lay half-asleep, curled into a ball against his side. At the sound of Esri's voice, Mon-El glanced up from his perusal of the starburst of freckles that trailed up the back of her thighs. "Hmm?" he asked.

"Krypton. What was it like? And your betrothed. Was she horribly boring?" She stretched out a hand, her long, curled brown hair brushing her bare shoulders and arms as she moved. Esri reached for the small pouch she'd brought with her, and offered it to Mon-El. "Ydux?"

Mon-El shook his head, reaching instead for the half-empty carafe of wine that rested against his pillow. Esri scowled unhappily, watching as he drank. "See? She's boring, and she's already turned you boring."

Mon-El was silent. He found that he didn't particularly want to talk to these women about Kara. She would be here soon enough, her too-honest face exposed to the sharp fangs of the nobility. Esri could be blunt, but she wasn't nearly among the worst.

"I had an ancestor that went to Krypton during the Endless War." Her friend spoke up suddenly, yawning. "She never came back."

"Everyone has an ancestor that was killed on Krypton," Esri answered, voice dripping with condescension. The other woman shrugged.

"No, she got married. To a Kryptonian. We still have the pictures in the archives. They had children." She pondered this for a moment, looking wistful. "They looked happy."

Esri dismissed this input with a wave of her hand. "Psh, there's no such thing as a happy Kryptonian. She'll be cold. Frigid. She won't know how to take care of you."

Mon-El thought of Kara Zor-El, and the way her skin flushed when she was angry. Cold didn't seem to describe her. "Maybe."

"They barely even touch each other. It's cruel." The pout on her lips might have been genuine worry. With Esri, it was impossible to tell. "I don't want you to suffer."

"I won't," Mon-El said, keeping his voice soft and reassuring. His hand drifted to Esri's face, tangling in the hair that brushed her temples. "Not with you around, right? We've always taken care of each other."

He pressed a light kiss to Esri's shoulder, and she brightened under the gentle attention. "That's true," she acknowledged, and smiled.

If Mon-El's answering smile was hollow and distant, Esri didn't seem to notice. Beside him, Esri's friend had rolled onto her side and quietly fallen asleep.

*

He passed most of the days and nights until Kara's arrival in much the same way as he always had. Men and women clustered around him, and the parties faded, each one into the next. Mon-El found himself turning down wine and ydux more frequently than he ever had before. He couldn't help remembering Kara's face at their first meeting, and her horrified expression when he'd fallen into the sandy fountain.

Perhaps Esri was right. Perhaps he was already changing. Mon-El couldn't help the small shiver of uneasiness that came with the thought. It was less than two weeks until Kara's arrival. The entire palace seemed a minefield of nervous servants and artisans, and his mother's daily tantrums. None of it helped Mon-El's own apprehension, and he escaped into the city as often as he could.

"Where's Var-Eth?" he asked, as he sat down in his quarters with a heavy sigh, late in the afternoon. He'd spent most of the day on the garatta field. His mount had been in a willful, disobedient mood, and now he had the bruises to show for it, running across his forearms and the back of his thighs.

Caile stood at attention when Mon-El spoke. "He's in the barracks, sir, preparing a muster. Her Majesty wished to select personal guards for the princess before she arrives."

Mon-El paused in the act of stripping off his garatta boots, and stared. "My mother wishes to do what, now?"

Caile shrugged. "That's what Master Var-Eth told me."

Mon-El considered this, trying to picture Kara in the company of the types of Guardsmen that his mother preferred. They swore an oath at a young age, and were trained to be ruthless in the pursuit of it, which the soft but stubborn woman he'd met on Krypton would almost certainly hate. Which his mother probably considered a side benefit, Mon-El thought cynically. He glanced up at the young guard in his room.

"Caile, would you be willing to be transferred?" he asked, only half-seriously.

The guard's mouth drew open at the unexpected question. "Have I offended you, your highness?" 

"No, of course not." Mon-El shook his head, thinking it over. "I'll go down to the barracks myself, after dinner."

"Message incoming," the floor announced unexpectedly. Mon-El squinted down at the holocrystal he didn't remember dropping there.

"Show message," he instructed the object.

"Another love letter?" 

Mon-El threw an amused glance towards his guard, before turning his attention to the stream of text displayed in front of him. Caile blinked, embarrassed by his own brazen familiarity.

"Sorry, sir."

Mon-El shrugged, and began to read. It wasn't a love letter, by his standards. It was a note almost exactly the same as the one before, a dry summary of the latest news from Krypton. Scientific developments, mostly. It was incredibly boring, he thought, but Mon-El wasn't rude enough to refuse the awkward attempt at an overture. "I think she wants to be friends."

Caile nodded uncertainly. "That's nice, sir."

"Start message. I lost an obscene amount of money on the garatta field today. Perhaps when you arrive, you'll bring me better luck." The holocrystal display blinked and changed as the transcription began. Transmission to Krypton would be nearly instant, and Mon-El's imagination conjured up a picture of Kara in her home in Argo City, waiting patiently for his reply.

*

When Mon-El had been young, had been a small, earnest boy who talked too much and irritated all his tutors, he'd been fascinated by the guard barracks that sat in a far corner of the palace grounds. He'd demand every day the privilege of walking down to the building when the sun was high. There he would watch the company performing their afternoon drills and stare, enthralled, at their neat, dark uniforms.

"Can I be a Guardsman when I grow up?" he'd asked his nanny, and the young woman had smiled kindly down at him.

"You'll be a king when you grow up, Mon-El. That's much better than being someone's guard."

Mon-El had scowled petulantly. He hadn't known much about what kings did, but he'd already suspected that it couldn't be anything fun or particularly useful.

"Your Highness!" The sergeant seated by the front door stood up in alarm when Mon-El entered. "Are you--Can I help you?"

Mon-El didn't bother with preamble. "I wish to speak to any female guards available to be assigned."

The expression of shock on the sergeant's face deepened. "Your Highness? Female guards?"

Repeating himself didn't seem necessary. Mon-El set his eyebrows expectantly, knowing that the gesture probably conjured a resemblance to his father.

"Uh, sorry, sir. It's just that we only have a few at the moment, and they might not quite be what you're used to?" He threw a sharp glance over at Caile, standing a few paces behind his prince. "Is there a problem with the guards currently assigned to you?"

"Immediately," Mon-El ordered.

*

Dae-Lin was a stout, muscular woman, with fine lines crinkling the edges of her eyes and mouth. Her Guardsman uniform fit snugly around her broad hips and shoulders. The woman beside her was slender, with watchful eyes. Dae-Lin did enough talking for the both of them, in coarsely-accented High Daxamite.

"Everyone's been wondering about the Kryptonian--I mean, your betrothed, Your Highness. They've been making guesses about who would be assigned, but I don't think anybody wagered on us!"

"Have you ever worked with a Kryptonian?" Mon-El asked her, and Dae-Lin shook her head. 

"I don't think I've ever met one, to be honest. Guess they must be like any other beings." She elbowed the other guard in the side, as discreetly as she could. "Nenah, have you ever met a Kryptonian?"

The second guard nodded, speaking with a voice so soft it was difficult to catch all of her words. Her long hair was pulled back in a practical style that framed a serious face. "I was assigned to one of the royal transports, once. Did a lot of cruises for the ambassadors. Kryptonians are okay. Didn't cause any trouble, at least."

"I think this one will cause plenty," Mon-El muttered, half to himself.

Dae-Lin's face split into broad, amused laughter. "That kind of trouble's only natural, for newlyweds. But that'll be your trouble to handle, if it's okay for me to say so, sir."

Nenah looked worried, biting her lip in thought before she spoke. "I've never worked inside the palace. Neither of us have."

"That's fine. I don't think this princess will be too worried about protocol."

"Do we report to you, sir?" Nenah still appeared doubtful.

"Of course not. Daxam is her new home. She's not going to be treated like a prisoner here." Not if Mon-El could prevent it.

*

When the transport beam resolved and faded, Kara was standing in the courtyard landing zone by herself. She blinked, looking around at the new terrain. There was a brisk wind that was beginning to blow across the courtyard, heralding a storm, and she raised a hand to brush her hair out of her eyes. 

"Lady Kara Zor-El. I am Lar Gand. It is a pleasure to meet you." His father stepped forward, flashing her his most affable smile.

Kara bowed politely in his direction. "Your Majesty."

"Are your parents intending to remain in orbit?" Mon-El asked, when there appeared to be no more passengers transporting from the ship. A pile of traveling cases had begun to materialise, growing steadily larger after each beam faded. Kara's entire life, packed up neatly.

Kara's letters hadn't mentioned the wedding preparations at all, and Mon-El wondered if she was as overwhelmed as he was.

"They're delayed. They'll be here for the wedding," Kara explained apologetically. "My mother had an unexpected emergency? In her work."

"A judicial emergency?" 

She nodded earnestly, ignoring Mon-El's amused tone. "The Military Guild captured a small fleet of ships on their way to Slaver's Moon."

Mon-El winced. He wouldn't want to be a crew of slaver pirates in the hands of the Kryptonians, though he thought such people would deserve whatever punishment they got.

"No matter, Lady Kara Zor-El. We will take good care of you in his absence." Lar Gand spoke just a little too loudly, in the booming, cheerful tones he usually reserved for the most inane heads of state. "In the meantime, we begin celebrations. Our entire planet is very excited to meet you."

Kara's closed, serious face said she doubted very much that that was true, but Mon-El's father ignored the unspoken insult. The mask of a smile he was wearing never wavered from his face, as he gestured towards his son.

"Well, ah. Welcome to Daxam. I have many things to attend to, but I'm sure Mon-El will see you settled. We will meet again at the celebrations." He turned his back and hurried off without another word. 

After he left there was a moment of awkward silence, interrupted only by the sound of the wind. 

"Well, uh. Your rooms are in the palace. The servants can transport your things--" Mon-El beckoned with one hand. Two men stepped forward, dressed in the simple white clothing all the palace servants wore. 

"Stop!" Kara shouted at them, unexpectedly. Both men stepped back, comprehending her intent despite the strange language. "I don't want them to touch my belongings."

"They'll be careful," Mon-El promised.

Kara shook her head firmly. "I don't want any _slaves_ to touch my belongings. I can carry them myself."

Ah. Mon-El eyed the large number of traveling cases that had materialised behind her, then glanced sceptically at her. Kara glared openly back at him. Mon-El's brain raced to think of a solution.

"My guards will assist you." If that doesn't offend your delicate Kryptonian sensibilities, he managed not to say out loud. "The Royal Guardsmen are free men."

Kara blinked, making an impolite face. She glared disbelievingly at him. "Are they?"

"I just said--"

"How much do they get paid?"

Mon-El stared at her. It had never crossed his mind to ask such a question.

"How much relief time do they get in a day? In a year? I mean, I'm sure that they might believe that they're free, but--"

"Please. Stop talking. My guards are honourable. They have saved my life more than once. I know Kryptonians think they have everything figured out, but that doesn't give you the right to come here and insult good people who have pledged their lives to mine. And yours, by the way." The speech came out in one forceful rush of breath before he could stop himself. 

It wasn't the first time he'd yelled at her, but this time she actually seemed to be paying attention to the words. Kara's eyes widened, and then her gaze dropped to the ground. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, and it sounded sincere. 

Neither Caile nor Var-Eth knew what to do with an apology from the future princess, and it showed in their awkward postures. They made no acknowledgement, but walked to the neat pile of luggage and began to work, transferring each piece to the waiting robotic sled that hovered just off the ground.

*

"The entire palace runs on the labour of slaves," he whispered to her in the hallway. She was following at his side, carefully eyeing each of the twists and turns. But she'd get lost, inevitably, for the first few weeks. Visitors always did. "I understand that it's not ideal, but--"

Kara glared sharp daggers in his direction. "It's a crime. My family puts slavers in jail."

 _Yet you're here anyway_ , Mon-El thought, not for the first time. _Why?_ "I just mean that you might find avoiding the labour of slaves impractical."

"I'll manage."

"Sure. You'll cook your own food? Grow your own crops? Manufacture your own clothing?"

"If I have to," Kara insisted, with child-like stubbornness.

"You might find that difficult, along with your duties as princess."

Kara's unhappy expression grew even tighter. "Why? You don't seem that busy."

Mon-El didn't respond to the insult, and his wordless aggravation carried them the entire length of the last hall. He raised his voice as they approached the door to his quarters. "Enter."

The door slid open, letting them both through.

"Welcome home," he said.

Kara turned in slow circles for a moment, examining each side of the room. She spotted his garatta boots, and a holocrystal sitting on a nearby bench, still displaying the novel he was in the middle of reading. Her brows knitted into a puzzled frown. "These are your quarters."

"Our quarters," Mon-El corrected her.

"But we won't be married for six days yet."

Mon-El waited, but she offered no further explanation. "And?" he asked, finally.

"And!" The expression of shock was plain on her face. "We can't share a bed before we've said our vows?"

"We--first of all, my quarters extend far beyond this room. We could easily go weeks without catching sight of each other, much less sharing a bed." Mon-El took a breath then fell silent, realising he had no idea what else to say to such a ridiculous objection.

She still looked nervous. "But you expected--is that what you want? To do, ah, stuff? Right away?" 

Mon-El couldn't help it. He laughed out loud. "Stuff?"

Kara blushed. "Sex."

"I didn't think Kryptonians knew what that was."

"You might be surprised," Kara answered, and his breath caught, but the flirtatious note was gone in an instant. Perhaps he'd imagined it. "I know eventually we'll have to--"

"Not if you're going to keep looking that unhappy about it." Of all the scenarios that had disturbed Mon-El's thoughts, a marriage without a physical connection hadn't crossed his mind. But he wasn't about to a bed a woman who could barely look at him, or say the words.

"I just meant--the contract specifies children."

Such contracts usually did, and Mon-El tilted his head at her in open puzzlement. "We don't need to fuck to have children. Your own planet invented that technology a long time ago." 

"Not everyone believes in using it. Not unless it's necessary."

"Your parents had you traditionally?" Mon-El asked, struggling to keep a note of incredulity from his voice. Pregnancy wasn't unheard of on Daxam, but it was uncommon. Mon-El knew very little about it, save that it was very dangerous.

Kara nodded firmly. The topic seemed to have put her back on confident ground. "Rao controls the gift of life. People aren't intended to interfere."

"That's--okay." Mon-El had no idea what to say to that, either.

*

"Var-Eth." Later Mon-El took his dinner in the anteroom, feeling something halfway between frustrated tears and helpless laughter. "I think I'm betrothed to a religious zealot. Also a virgin."

Var-Eth shrugged, expressionless. "Some virgins can be quite enticing, in my experience."

Mon-El groaned in dismay. He tried hard not to picture Kara, nervous and trembling underneath him. "That is not helpful."

*

When Daxam was still a young, nameless planet circling a red star, the goddess Lia had fallen out of the sky. She'd splashed into the Eastern sea, and it had taken her five days to swim to land. That was how the story had been told, anyway, for more than twenty five thousand years. In some versions the goddess fell not out of a cloudless sky but from Krypton's darkened, Daxam-ward side. 

The question of whether life in this system had been birthed on Krypton or Daxam was a debate that both sides still refused to concede. But in all the stories, it had been five days until Lia's bare feet had stepped on the sand.

*

There would be five days of celebrations, and then he would be married. Slaves and robots scurried through the city, carrying flowers and food and last-minute invitations to the most favoured parties. There was music in the palace courtyard, and drunkenness and dancing in the streets that would inevitably turn to brutal fistfights after dark. For Mon-El, the pangs of trouble started on the first night.

"Are you sure you don't want any wine?" Lar Gand asked, for what must have been the third or fourth time.

"No, thank you," Kara answered politely. The banquet had started just before sundown, but hours later dishes were still leaving the kitchen, weighing down the long tables that circled the palace banquet hall. His father sat in his usual place beneath the royal seal, and beckoned to a slave who poured more wine into Lar Gand's own empty cup. 

"Don't be silly, Lady Kara Zor-El. It's the last of the winter crop. Quite delicious. Here, I'll take the jug and you can pour it yourself." 

So far his parents thought Kara's insistence on serving herself was darkly hilarious, like a toddler determined to pretend she was a bird. Kara bore their amusement with stoic grace. "Kara," she corrected, and Lar Gand frowned at her in confusion.

"Hmmn?"

"I don't have a title. Yet, I guess. And you don't have to use my full name. It's just Kara."

"Of course," Lar Gand nodded, sipping his wine. A stranger might have mistaken the turn of his mouth behind his cup for a genuine smile. "Kara. It's so difficult to understand alien names."

Into the stilted pause in conversation, Mon-El said, "I met a princess once with over a hundred names. It took her forever just to be introduced whenever she entered a room."

His mother sat at his father's side, picking at the plate of fruits in front of her. "Well. You can always tell when a Kryptonian has entered the room by the gust of hot air that follows." 

She said it under her breath, but the sound still carried easily across the table. The Kryptonian chancellor looked up, his features wrinkling into an offended grimace. Shal-Ut had arrived from Krypton that morning. Now she sat to Mon-El's right, beside a quiet, beautiful woman she'd introduced as her wife. Both women looked unhappy, leaning in close to whisper to each other.

Lar Gand laughed heartily, draining his just-filled cup and opening his mouth to say more.

"Kara and I are going to dance," Mon-El announced. He rose in an uncoordinated hurry, almost knocking over Shal-Ut's wine goblet.

Kara stuffed the last of a piece of bread into her mouth, looking up in surprise. "We are?" she asked, with her mouth full.

"Yep," Mon-El took Kara's hand in his, and guided her gently to her feet. "Let's go."

*

He'd wanted only to get Kara away from his parents' pointed barbs, but as they reached the dance floor Mon-El realised that maybe this hadn't been a very well-thought escape plan. On Daxam dancing was its own kind of sport, designed for contact. The dancers swayed and gyrated to the musicians' drums, bobbing against their neighbours, in thrall to the music.

Mon-El paused at the edge of the writhing sea of party guests, then turned to Kara. She had hesitated next to him, watching the whirling mass of beings with cautious eyes.

"Take a breath," Mon-El whispered, flashing a reasonable imitation of a confident grin as he drew her into the crowd. His hands moved to rest at her waist, guiding her into the rhythm. 

Mon-El knew he wasn't good at very many things. But this he could do. Kara's body was warm close to his, her brow knotted as she concentrated on keeping pace with his steps. It was a relief not to have to make conversation, or try to keep track of the growing list of verbal minefields. It was nice to have a moment, unnoticed, just to watch her face.

"So." Kara exhaled slow, shaky breaths. Mon-El could feel her beginning to relax. Mon-El led her into a twirl that barely avoided a collision with the dancers next to them. "This is a Daxamite party."

Mon-El swept Kara back into his arms in one smooth motion and studied her, amused. "Wait. Are you actually smiling?"

"Mon-El." Kara rolled her eyes. He still liked the soft, foreign way that she said his name. 

"You are."

"You're--" Her tongue brushed her mouth as she spoke, and he never got a chance to hear Kara's rejoinder. Out of the corner of his eye Mon-El spotted the dancers heading towards them, speeding directly into their path, but it was already too late to move out of their way. The impact happened in an instant. Mon-El grabbed Kara's waist tighter, pulling her closer to him and keeping her upright through the crash.

"Are you okay?" Kara asked the dancer behind her, and the woman made a happy noise of recognition.

"Mon-El!" Esri's body language was a melodramatic imitation of surprise, as if she was shocked to encounter him at his own betrothal banquet. 

They'd all but come to a standstill in the middle of the dance floor, but there wasn't any pausing a Daxamite crowd once the music had started. Esri's partner pulled her to a safe spot on the edge of the dance floor without preamble, barely dodging a second accident. Mon-El followed suit. 

"Kryptonian!" Esri didn't bother to bow, but her dance partner dipped his head towards both of them. Kara slipped out of Mon-El's embrace with a quickness that he couldn't read. She nodded gracefully to Esri, despite the rude greeting she'd been given. 

"Her name is Kara," Mon-El reminded her flatly. "Kara, this is Esri."

Mon-El didn't know the man that stood next to Esri, but his clothing suggested he might be nobility from the islands to the south. Likely someone who didn't come to Daxam City very much, if Mon-El didn't recognise his face. The stranger stood silently for a moment, then made a face as Esri's elbow connected discreetly with his side. He held out his hand to Kara at the silent prompt, and smiled charmingly at her.

"Princess Kara. Exchange?" he asked, and Kara glanced at Mon-El, looking for help.

"He's asking you to dance," Mon-El explained.

"Oh!" Her features brightened in understanding. "Thank you. I guess so?" 

The islander smiled broadly, and in a moment he had swept Kara into the fray. Esri held out a hand to Mon-El.

"Very subtle," Mon-El whispered into her ear. He'd liked dancing with Kara. But Esri was a familiar dance partner, one who knew all the moves Where Kara had been shy Esri was shameless, pressing her generous curves against him. "You could join the Intelligence Service, with sneaky moves like that."

"She dances like a fish," Esri whispered back.

"Watch how you speak about your future princess," Mon-El warned. Esri's shoulders lifted and fell, bared in her dark, draped dress, easily shrugging off his scolding.

She shifted minutely until his fingers rested intimately against her hips, and leaned her mouth towards his face in a gesture that managed to be more aggressive than seductive. "If the royal family thinks I am ever going to bow to a Kryptonian, then you have all lost your minds more than this charade already implies."

Mon-El stared at her for a moment. He didn't think he'd ever heard her discuss politics before. "It's not a charade."

"Whatever." She sighed, and her expression faded back to the usual bland prettiness that he was used to. "Can I come back to your rooms?"

Mon-El didn't answer right away. He looked up, scanning the dancing crowd for Kara's face and finding her nowhere. Esri's island friend was now far across the room, scowling into the depths of a goblet of wine.

Esri was glaring at him, seeming to realise that she'd lost his attention. "Well?" she demanded.

"Not tonight, Esri."

"Mon-El!" she protested, as he spun towards the edge of the dance floor and deposited her there. If she said anything else, Mon-El was too distracted to hear it as he walked away.

*

Mon-El hurried back to his room at as measured a pace as he could manage. Caile followed at his heels, saying nothing. Inside his quarters, Nenah was on duty. "Open," he said aloud, and Kara's door slid open.

"Mon-El!" Kara jumped up in surprise, knocking over the holocrystal that sat beside her. She muttered a command in Kryptonian, and the screen she'd been reading turned blank. "Don't you ask permission before you enter a room? What if I had been doing--"

Mon-El raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"--something private," Kara finished uncertainly.

"You're going to find privacy a rare commodity in the palace, Kara." Her face fell, and Mon-El shrugged, keeping his tone gentle. He made an expansive gesture, mimicking an opening door. "You don't need my permission to enter a room to find me. If that helps."

"Thank you." Kara's answering smile was weak and tired. 

"You disappeared from the party," Mon-El added, then hesitated. He didn't quite know how to say that he'd been worried about her.

"Yes. Thank you for the dance? But that guy was, um." Kara, too, seemed to be searching for words. "He was overly friendly?"

He winced. "Yeah. I should have warned you about that."

Kara's eyes went wide in indignation. "Wait. You knew he was going to try to get, um, familiar? With me?"

"Not exactly? But you were dancing. And he's a Daxamite. So."

Kara considered this for a moment, then finally said, "You never try to hit on me."

"That's because I've actually talked to you," Mon-El pointed out, then found himself caught off-guard by Kara's disappointed expression. "I just mean that when I extend that invitation, you'll be ready for it, Kara."

Now she simply looked fretful, glancing away from his gaze and down at the floor. "What if I'm never ready?"

"You worry a lot," Mon-El told her quietly. "Even for a Kryptonian."

"I do not!" Kara protested, and then contradicted the denial immediately with her next question. "Is that woman your girl friend?"

Mon-El ran the sentence again in his head as he struggled to decipher it. They'd taken to speaking mostly Kryptonian in their rooms, and Mon-El knew the words, but not the combination that she'd used them in. Kara seemed to recognise she'd once again asked him a question he didn't understand, and searched for the words to try again. "I mean, uh. Does she want to mate with you?"

"Often," Mon-El answered honestly, and Kara blushed.

"I mean, officially. Did she want to marry you? Before I arrived?"

"I never asked her," Mon-El admitted. "But I doubt it. Esri's parents betrothed her to someone else a long time ago. I mean, I'm sure he's not as good-looking as I am, but."

He shrugged, and Kara laughed. It was a sweet, light sound. "I'm sure he's not," she agreed easily. "I guess I hadn't thought much about it. How you had a whole life of your own, before this treaty."

"So did you." He remembered the note she'd hidden when he entered. A suitor, on Krypton? A choice she'd made for herself, and no doubt a better match than Mon-El could ever hope to be.

The conversation lapsed, and in the silence Mon-El noticed that Kara was shivering. She still wore the gown she'd worn to the banquet, underneath a worn shawl. She sat by the window, huddled onto herself, teeth chattering.

"Warm room," he said to the walls, and in a heartbeat the temperature around them began to rise perceptibly.

Kara smiled gratefully at him. "Thanks. I guess this weather will take some getting used to. I thought Daxam was supposed to be sunny." 

"I'm afraid you've arrived during winter," Mon-El answered, with a small, apologetic shrug. Kara groaned. The hot, dry season was still months away.

"Ugh. I don't think I'm cut out to be a Daxamite."

"You make a better Daxamite than I would a Kryptonian," he pointed out, and Kara's groans turned to dismayed laughter.

"Mon-El. That is the worst compliment I have ever received."

Mon-El laughed with her, basking in the sight of the smile that lit up her eyes.

*

Kara's family finally arrived the next day, in the company of what appeared to Mon-El to be half the political class of Krypton. Kara laughed and ran into her mother's arms, in what seemed to Mon-El to be a very unKryptonian display of excitement. He watched their reunion quietly, hanging back, outside of the fray.

His mother had unexpectedly come out to the transport zone. Her nose wrinkled with distaste as she watched the scene, standing beside him. "I had no idea there would be so many of them."

Mon-El shot a sideways glance at her. "Mother. This was your idea."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it."

The transport beam was still depositing straight-faced Kryptonians and piles of luggage, filling up the transport zone and spilling over in all directions. Kara's aunt and uncle had arrived with their young son in tow. Kal was standing between them, glowering at the outline of Krypton, its shape mostly hidden today by an overcast sky.

"Still," Rhea said, after a moment. "Things seem to be going well. Is the sex acceptable?"

"You mean you don't already know everything that happens in my quarters?" Mon-El asked her with a flash of rudeness, and his mother scowled.

"No. Your guards are very faithful. It's aggravating. And those two new ones." She made a muted sound of disgust from deep in her throat. "They pretended not to speak High Daxamite properly. Why women would want to work with the Guardsmen, I can't imagine."

"I'm sorry I thwarted your plans to spy on my wife," Mon-El answered, knowing he didn't sound sorry at all.

His mother eyed him. "Don't forget who your family is," she murmured to him.

A backwards sort of reminder of love, perhaps, coming from anyone else. Mon-El knew his mother well enough to recognise a subtle threat when he heard one.

*

It wasn't just the Kryptonians. The city was swelling with alien visitors, more than Mon-El could remember seeing in Daxam City in his entire lifetime. Daxamites arrived from every region, to attend the biggest party since his parents had been married twenty-seven years ago, and any who could afford it were intent on making the pilgrimage. Kings and empresses and first ministers were arriving from around the sector, and sometimes further. 

When Mon-El got tired of greeting new guests, and proffering thanks for the parade of inexplicable wedding gifts that arrived at the palace each day, he escaped out to the palace stables at the first chance he got. Kara had disappeared to the Kryptonian embassy just after breakfast, Dae-Lin following closely behind her. 

Kara had taken to both of her guards without complaint, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. At least there was one thing going smoothly so far, and Mon-El was grateful for it.

Today's garatta game wasn't scheduled to start for hours, but a game was only as good as the mount one rode. He hadn't had a chance to spend time in the stables in too many days. His favourite animal was a young mare, green with a stripe of blue scales that ran from her ears down to the tip of her tail. She made a soft, lowing noise to greet him, butting him insistently with the crown of her head until he had fed her all the sweet treats that he was carrying.

"Mon-El!"

Pa-Ych tensed at the sound of an approaching stranger's voice. Mon-El shushed her gently, scratching her along the angle of her wing joints until she relaxed. He turned to greet the visitor with a broad smile.

"Shi. I didn't know you were coming."

Prince Shi'kyi'fre'rie'ehma of Mahad waved as he approached. The skin across his cheeks flushed the same deep green as Pa-Ych's scales when he drew nearer to her, but he didn't seem to notice. "My sister is here too," Shi told him, switching smoothly from Daxamite into Mahadian. "The official Mahadian delegation, here to see you off into married life."

Mon-El rolled his eyes. "When are you getting married? Because I can't wait to show up to Mahad and embarrass you."

"That's very optimistic, assuming you'll be invited. Where is the future princess? I hope she will be here to see the game? The embarrassment has not yet begun, my friend."

Mon-El shook his head. "She's at the Kryptonian embassy for the day."

Shi laughed heartily. It was a rough, rattling sound. "A Kryptonian! I still can't quite believe that. How will you survive?"

"I think I'll manage," Mon-El answered, and something unintended must have shown in his face. 

Shi's skin blushed a light orange, fading to pink around eyes that changed to the same shade. It was a colour that Mon-El had never seen him display before, and didn't know the meaning of. "Ah," he said, softly. "Well. That's unexpected."

"Shut up, Shi." Mon-El kissed him, hard, before the Mahadian could spend any more time trying to guess his private thoughts.

Shi laughed, catching Mon-El's wrists in both his hands and pulling him closer. "Daxamites," he whispered, in a tone that managed to be both scolding and fond. "Either you have no feelings, or you have far too many."

Mon-El had no idea what that meant. His voice dipped low, as he tugged Shi down to the stall floor. "If you want something to feel, I've got some ideas." 

Pa-Ych munched on the fresh pile of leaves in her feed trough, and ignored them both completely.

*

Mon-El had played garatta on many planets across the sector. But the field in Daxam's capital would always be his favourite, and not just because it was home. It hovered a short distance off the coast, and the entire city would be visible from its centre. In early variations of the game, the field of play had been a cube, but tn modern days it was always a sphere such as this one. The field was shaped by a force field, beamed into place from a buoy floating below.

Dusk was beginning to settle in. The dull daytime glow of the force field was beginning to intensify, and by nightfall it would still be throwing off enough light to play by. From below it would drown out the moon, and the pale orb of Krypton that was usually the brightest body in the sky after dark. Choppy seas swirled beneath the field, whipped up by a sharp wind. A storm was incoming, Mon-El thought, and he wondered if Kara was warm enough tonight. Mon-El glanced towards the east, where he knew the Kryptonian embassy stood on the edges of the Lower City, then forced his attention back to the garatta field.

Pa-Ych snorted beneath him, flapping her wings. "Hold on," he told her, stroking her warm, heaving flank with a reassuring hand. With the field in her sights and the low hum of the crowd on the land beneath her, she was impatient to begin.

The ball shot up from the buoy, and the game began.

Mon-El's team immediately took advantage of sloppy defending, and scored twice in quick succession. The other team's style of play changed in response, becoming determined and more reckless. He could spot Shi atop his mount, grinning as the score flashed around the perimeter. The victorious expression was wiped off his face almost immediately, as his sister was roughly checked by a giant, red-scaled mount playing in the opposing team. The Mahadian princess could ride probably as well as she could walk. But she was no match for gravity. The unexpected impact knocked her from her saddle, and she fell, caught by the force field's net above the waves. Her face rippled into a violent shade of blue, but Mon-El thought she was surprised, rather than injured.

The princess' mount screeched indignantly, flying down to retrieve its rider from the artificial basin. The princess scrambled aboard, and the game began again.

Mon-El threw himself to physically defending his team as well as the scoring area. By the game's intermission, two more riders had been knocked from their animals. The game was a tied score, and threatened to become one long shouting match. Mon-El spoke passable Mahadian, but what he understood of Shi's cursing was a simply a slew of fire metaphors that he found incomprehensible.

"Shi," Mon-El shouted. Their mounts hovered close enough together for Shi to catch the half-empty bottle of wine that Mon-El tossed into his hands, and the easy, calming smile directed his way.

Shi flushed a shade of purple that was simple enough to translate. He was angry. He drew several sips from the bottle before tossing it back to Mon-El. "This violence is an insult."

Rough play was common enough in the Daxamite version of garatta. When he'd been younger the field had seemed the only place where he might not be treated like glass, and he'd relished it. Mon-El shrugged. "I live with a Kryptonian. I am growing used to insults."

That drew a smile from his friend. "Of course. Is this the secret to tranquility? Sharing the bed of a beautiful Kryptonian?"

Mon-El opened his mouth to respond with a joke, but was interrupted as the force field began to flash. The game was resuming.

The second half of the game threatened to be as rough as the first. His team gained possession of the ball. A perfect pass was lobbed in Shi's direction, bouncing off his mount's chest and towards his sister where she'd threaded through two defenders. When she looked up, most of her teammates were blocked by the opposing team, shouting to each other as they fought their way out of a coordinated blockade.

Mon-El gestured with one hand on the back of Pa-Ych's neck, and she scrambled forward just in time to accept the pass. The ball bounced gracefully off her snout, and towards the scoring zone.

Mon-El never saw where the hit came from. He barely even felt it, only knew that suddenly Pa-Ych's warm flank wasn't there beneath him, and he was falling. Mon-El kept his eyes open as the force field seemed to rush up to meet him. Then blinked, as he found himself plummeting straight through it. There was barely time to brace himself or understand what was happening, before he hit the cold, stormy sea and began to sink.

He was vaguely aware of Pa-Ych, her distressed screech filtering through his haze of pain. Her tail and feet sliced through the water above him, her wings casting a shadow that turned the water black. Mon-El struggled to reach the surface, feeling as if his whole body was burning, and then winked out of consciousness in an instant.

*

"I warned your father." His mother was pacing across his bedroom floor, the motion making him dizzy. "I knew this would happen."

"Mother," Mon-El said, then hated how small and young he sounded. "You can't possibly have known that the field would fail. It was an accident."

"Right at the moment I invite all these aliens into my city? Quite a coincidence."

Her voice was deep and hoarse with fury. She probably wasn't angry at him, Mon-El reminded himself. The palace doctor was still fussing at his side, bandaging the wrist and shoulder that he had sprained as he hit the water. The bandages were warm where they touched his skin. He knew the energy they exuded was meant to help him heal, but the sensation was always disorienting.

"Send the engineers out to look at it," Mon-El suggested. "They'll tell you there was no tampering."

Rhea raised her voice, gesturing with hands balled into fists. "Sometimes you are terribly naive, my son. Var-Eth told me about the Kryptonian protests. Now they have escalated to full-blown terrorism."

The doctor's main prescription had been a small portion of ydux. It was so far doing very little for the pain in his shoulder. He was increasingly sleepy, though, and tired of his mother's ranting. He thought of Kara, who had been so happy to see her family's arrival.

"Mother. Please do not start an interplanetary diplomatic crisis the day before my wedding."

Rhea glowered at him, then turned and swept out of the room. The doctor hurriedly packed up his case, and followed behind her.

Only a few minutes had passed when there was a noise at his door, too uncertain to be his mother returning. Mon-El pulled himself up into a sitting position.

When the partition slid open, Shi was standing in his quarters. His skin was flushed a pale shade of green that might have been sorrow or embarrassment.

"Apologies, my friend. I should have been closer."

Mon-El shook his head. "Don't. Then you would have gone for a swim instead. How is Pa-Ych?"

"After fishing her rider out of the ocean? Exceedingly upset," Shi admitted. "I did my best to calm her, but I'm afraid that animal only has one true love."

"You should have brought her a treat."

Shi rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "I hope you don't intend to spoil your wife as badly as you spoil your fat animals. It's a terrible habit, my father says."

"I am not likely to take the advice of a being with thirteen bratty spouses." From the bed, Mon-El reached out with his good hand. "Come here. I'm way too injured to chase you."

"You will be making use of that for a while, I expect," Shi grumbled, but he moved obligingly into Mon-El's arms.

*

It was the deepest part of the night when Mon-El's door slid open again. He roused himself from a restless sleep at the sound of light footfalls, as the lights brightened at the movement. Shi lay in his arms, fast asleep. His head was a comfortable weight on Mon-El's chest as he muttered to himself, under the spell of some contented Mahadian dream.

"Rao!"

Mon-El blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. Kara stood at the foot of his bed, blue eyes open and startled.

"Why--I mean what--Mon-El, who in Rao's galaxy is this?"

She was pointing at Shi, her voice raised. Mon-El disentangled himself from the other prince and rose from his bed. "He's my friend," he began, but Kara interrupted him with a gasp and averted her gaze.

Mon-El glanced down at himself, and sighed. He reached for the pants he'd discarded and began to pull them on, wincing at the pain in his shoulder at the movement. "My friend," he repeated, barely keeping his own voice from rising. "Who is sleeping. Go to the anteroom. If you have to, you can yell at me there."

Kara glared at him, then whirled and stomped off. 

It must have been the scheduled time for his guard to patrol a circuit of the grounds outside his quarters. When Mon-El entered the front room a few minutes later, the room was empty, save for Kara. His betrothed was standing belligerently with her arms crossed over her chest. 

"Okay. What is the problem?"

"What do you mean, what's the problem? We're getting married, and there's a man in your bed!"

"Kara." Mon-El sighed. He was exhausted, and confused, his mood worsening with every moment that Kara talked in circles. "That's a summary of the situation. Not an explanation of the problem?"

"It's not--I don't mind that you like men," she told him earnestly.

Mon-El scowled, at yet another clarification that illuminated nothing. "That's very generous of you."

Kara drew herself backwards at the sting of his sarcasm. "We're getting married. This afternoon! Everyone told me that Daxamites have no honour, but I thought you could respect me at least a little."

Mon-El rubbed his aching shoulder. "Of course I respect you."

"Not enough to at least try to be monogamous, apparently. What if--"

Mon-El cut her off. "Stop," he said. "I don't know that word. Try to be what?"

Kara frowned at him, flustered, and then blew out a frustrated breath. "Monogamous," she repeated, in Kryptonian. "I don't know the word in Daxamite. It's when a couple pledges to only be intimate with each other?"

"Ah." Mon-El considered this, speechless for a long moment. "There is almost definitely no word for that in Daxamite."

Kara stared at him. "You're kidding."

Mon-El shook his head.

"But marriage is blood."

"Okay?"

"Blood is Rao's gift. It's sacred. It isn't meant to be defiled with sex with people outside of the marriage."

"Kryptonians have a lot of opinions about sex," Mon-El said, finally.

"At least we don't need to be having it constantly!"

"That's too bad!" Mon-El yelled back at her, as he finally lost his hold on his temper. "Maybe if you did, you wouldn't all be so pompous about things that are none of your business. Kara, you are the one who entered my bedroom."

Kara drew her lips together in a petulant frown. "You said I could."

"I didn't know you were going to lecture me about what I was doing in it," Mon-El answered, waving a hand to quiet her when she opened her mouth to argue. "Let me see if I have this right. There is some Kryptonian marriage custom that forbids me from fucking anyone other than my wife."

Kara grimaced at his frank phrasing, but she nodded.

"You don't want to have sex with me," he reminded her.

"I just thought we could wait--"

"But I'm not allowed to have sex with anyone else?"

"You make it sound unreasonable."

"There's a reason for that, Kara. Find someone else to bore with your opinions of them. I'm going back to bed." 

*

When he returned to his bedroom, Shi was getting dressed, shrugging into the first of the many layers that visiting Mahadians often wore. There was no tint to his skin except the usual warm brown, leaving Mon-El no clues to guess Shi's mood.

Mon-El sat down beside him on the bed, heaving a tired sigh. "You don't have to leave." 

"Morning's almost here. I think I've caused enough trouble for one day. "

"Don't you dare," Mon-El said, unable to help the snarl in his voice. "I don't give a damn about her contradictory Kryptonian rules."

"That's not very culturally tolerant of you," Shi pointed out mildly, and Mon-El shook his head.

"I'm not the intolerant one. And it's nothing to do with her culture. She's just judgemental. And melodramatic."

"Maybe that too," Shi acknowledged.

"I know she hates everything about being on Daxam, but that doesn't give her the right--"

"Mon-El." Shi paused in putting on his clothing, resting a sympathetic hand on Mon-El's shoulder. "From what I just heard, that woman certainly does not hate _everything_ about being on Daxam."

Mon-El groaned in annoyance. He couldn't find anything in the memory of Kara's raised voice or stubborn, angry mouth to reconcile with what Shi was telling him. Right now he wasn't even certain that he even wanted it to be true. "Why does everyone keep saying that."

"I assume because it's quite obvious." 

"It's really not."

Shi pulled on the rest of his clothing and stood. "I really should go. It's almost morning, and the whole palace will be in here soon. I know Daxamites aren't meant to be lonely."

"I'm not worried about that," Mon-El scoffed, as he leaned up into Shi's warm goodbye kiss.

"Yes, you attract the most beautiful beings on every planet. I know," Shi said, and something in his tone made Mon-El frown.

"I don't need you to worry for me either."

"No, that's your wife's job. Mon-El, perhaps you should just try explaining."

"And perhaps if she wants to know something about me, she should try asking."

Shi sighed resignedly, before giving him another quick kiss. "Very well. Happy wedding day, my friend."

He left quietly, just as the night began to lift. Kara had vanished into her rooms, and his quarters were hushed with silence. Perhaps he could catch another couple hours of sleep, Mon-El thought, as he ordered the windows to block out the dawn. He was going to need it.

*

In the morning, the storm clouds that had been threatening to vent their rage over the coast finally broke. 

"Perhaps we should raise the shield," Rhea suggested, over a breakfast of fish and fruit. Kara was conspicuously absent, but both of his parents had pretended not to notice. Though perhaps Lar Gand was already beyond noticing much of anything, Mon-El thought, as his father motioned to a servant for a second bottle of wine.

Mon-El glanced up in surprise at the suggestion. The force field that would block the rain centred over the palace and extended a handful of leagues in every direction. He couldn't remember the last time that it had been used. The dome shaped field would keep the royal family and their guests dry, but the rain would still fall. It would all have to go somewhere.

"Mother, you can't flood the Lower City just to keep the weather off your dress."

Rhea frowned, but didn't rebuke his tone. "What difference does it make? They've survived it before."

"I'm the one getting married. And I'd rather you didn't."

It wasn't the sort of thing he'd have worried about before, or perhaps it was that he was only now finding the strength to voice his disagreement out loud.

Rhea opened her mouth for what was undoubtedly a fresh scolding, but Lar Gand joined the conversation, coming to Mon-El's defense.

"It's just rain, Rhea."

Rhea scowled, but conceded to her husband. "Very well."

"Do you remember our wedding day?There was no rain, but the winds! I thought you might fly away."

"Don't exaggerate," Rhea complained tolerantly. She reached for her own glass of wine.

Lar Gand grinned at his son, leaning in and speaking in a too-loud whisper. "Your mother and I made the terrible decision to get married in the summer. Brightest flare of the decade, that day. Your mother is still upset about being upstaged by the sun."

*

When he returned to his quarters, he had to weave his way through the crowd of Kryptonians that had descended. They buzzed in and out of Kara's bedroom, and the air nearly vibrated with their busy, nervous energy.

"Var-Eth," Mon-El whispered. The guard lifted his hands to clear a path for Mon-El, nearly knocking a startled Kryptonian into the wall. "Please try less to look as if you would like to challenge them all to combat."

"Kryptonians," Var-Eth muttered. His dark expression didn't lift.

Mon-El wasn't expecting to find one of the wedding party alone, split off from the crowd in his room. Jor-El waiting patiently by the window, looking up at the overcast sky. 

"Jor-El. Can I, uh." Mon-El's greeting came to an abrupt end, as he realised he had no idea why Kara's uncle might be searching him out.

Jor-El was a man with a soft, serious voice belying his broad stature. He spoke slowly, as if every sentence was a particular challenge. He had the same light eyes as Kara, the rest of his face hidden behind the thick brush of a beard, but his eyes never seemed to quite focus on Mon-El's face. "Your Highness. I wanted to talk to you."

Mon-El waited. Jor-El stumbled over his next words, disconcerted by the silence.

"Marriage is an imposing task. I know."

Mon-El narrowed his eyes, wondering exactly how many Kryptonians had been entertained by Kara with the list of his faults. "I understand you married for love."

From Jor-El's surprised blink, he had been rude, but Mon-El couldn't bring himself to apologise. "Yes," Jor-El said. "I know that is not the Daxamite tradition. But on Krypton, love is the only reason to tie yourself to someone else."

Mon-El sighed. "If you have come here to tell me that no part of this is what Kara wants for herself, I've heard that news already."

"No, you miss the point." Jor-El sighed, wringing his hands, and began again. "I wanted you to understand that Kara has come here to your planet, and given up her home, and every future she might have dreamed of--"

Mon-El flinched, and tried to cut him off. "I get it--"

"--Because she believes in this. She believes in the treaty. That she can save Daxam. And she believes she can save Krypton, as well."

"Save Krypton?" Mon-El repeated, perplexed, but Jor-El was shaking his head.

"Kara is--she's special. She has her family, in Argo City, but she has friends there as well. More than she realises, sometimes. If she needed to return--"

"If I chased her away, you mean."

Jor-El gave a non-committal shrug that was as good as a yes. "She would be welcome. We would understand that she had done her best."

"To save--Krypton?" 

Jor-El nodded minutely, and shuffled out of the room. 

It wasn't an ultimatum, exactly, but it had been an odd kind of warning. There was no time to follow, or ask more questions. Two servants entered the room in Jor-El's wake, carrying his wedding suit between them.

*

The wedding march began in the courtyard. The wedding party stood huddled under a covered arch, watching as an argument broke out at the head of the procession over who was to hold the wedding banner.

"Really," Rhea complained, as the slave she'd assigned to the task returned to her side in the face of Kara's firm denials. "Is even this day to be held hostage by this child's ridiculous whims?"

In the end the banner was handed to Kara's small cousin. The child held the object proudly above his head, undeterred by the rain, and marched ahead of them towards the temple. He'd gotten over his fear of aliens, it seemed. Mon-El supposed it was pointless to hope that the rest of their families might follow his example.

They walked in the shade of the Sun Monument, though the day was too dark for it to cast much of a shadow.

*

Many generations of Mon-El's family had been married in this spot, at the crumbling altar of a temple so ancient that no one still remembered whose glory it had been built to reflect.

Kara stood in the centre of the temple, her dress soaked through and leaving puddles of rainwater on the stone floor. She carefully recited the vows that Lar Gand read, struggling over the ancient dialect of Daxamite. Next came the Kryptonian priests, humming between interminable prayers that Mon-El only half-followed. They opened a small canister full of dark earth, and sprinkled it across the damp floor. The Kryptonians among them whispered approvingly, kneeling down to touch the clumps of mud.

"We are now standing on Kryptonian soil," the head priest intoned. "Let Rao's blessings be with us."

Mon-El kept hold of Kara's hand as he pledged to honour his wife in the name of a god who had done nothing but disrupt his life so far.

"This marriage is joined for eternity," Rhea announced, and for once she sounded pleased.

Kara's fingers against his were ice-cold, and she was shivering uncontrollably. Without thinking Mon-El squeezed her hand, trying to share his heat. Kara glanced over in surprise, looking away again the instant her eyes met his.

It was done.

*

When they arrived at the banquet hall hours later, the flood of congratulations was overwhelming. Esri was among the crowd with her family, dipping as low as she could manage in her stiff, elaborate gown. "Your Highnesses. Congratulations." To her credit the words came with a reasonable imitation of sincerity. It was more than most of the nobles of of the city had managed, even those he counted among his friends.

"Thank you," Kara responded simply. She'd dried and changed into a new gown, and been gracious to every well-wisher, but she still wasn't talking to him. Mon-El wondered if this was simply a prelude to the rest of his life, to be lived out in disdainful silence.

*

"This is a simple delivery task. Couldn't a robot take care of it?"

The first day of married life dawned clear and dry. By mid-morning the courtyard had already been baked dry by the red glow of the unexpected sun. Kara still huddled under a heavy layer of warm clothing. She stood in the centre of the courtyard, watching the shuttle that was being loaded full with carafes of wine with sceptical eyes. 

It was the first time she'd spoken to him unprompted since the night before their wedding. Mon-El coughed, swallowing down an aggravated sound in reaction to Kara's question. "When you came here you wanted to do everything yourself. Today you're too important for menial deliveries?"

"It's not the fact that it's menial. It's the fact that it's dumb."

"Marking the first days of a new marriage by passing out wine to one's neighbours is a tradition." Mon-El punctuated the explanation with a sigh. "I know you're too good for things like wine, but I thought traditions were important to you."

Kara shook her head, ignoring the double-sided barb. "I get it. The new prince and princess are going out to meet the people for the first time, and we shouldn't go empty-handed. I just meant, couldn't we give out something else?"

Mon-El's eyebrows rose at the astonishing suggestion. "Like what?"

"I don't know, just something more important! Anything. Food, or clothing, or better homes." Kara waved her arms in agitation, her voice rising slightly in volume. "Don't forget that I've seen the city, Mon-El. Wine is the least of their problems."

Mon-El glanced away from Kara's face to the back of the shuttle, where two Guardsmen he didn't recognise were continuing to fill it with their cargo. Mon-El grabbed her hand, ignoring the surprised squeak she made as he pulled her inside the passenger compartment of the shuttle and ordered the door closed.

"Mon-El!"

"Kara," he said earnestly. "Please. Don't talk about my parents like that where anyone can hear you."

"What?" She frowned at him. "I wasn't talking about your parents."

"You were suggesting that their care for their people is inadequate."

Kara stared at him for a moment, then her eyes widened. "Rao, wait a minute. You agree with me!"

"I do not." Mon-El's denial was as firm as he could manage, but Kara didn't seem to be listening.

"No, I think you kind of do. Otherwise you'd just let me get arrested and pilloried, or whatever."

Involuntarily he leaned towards her. They were already close enough, in the small shuttle compartment, and when he shifted position their foreheads were nearly touching. There was still so much, he thought, that she didn't understand. She might never. "I swore an oath to protect you. I don't know if you remember? It was yesterday."

Kara's mouth trembled for a second, in a sad, passing smile. "I remember. But I don't need protecting."

"You don't need a husband, either," he pointed out softly. "But you're stuck with one. Kara, let's say for argument's sake that you're right. That the people in the city need help. There won't be anything you can do if my mother has you beheaded to set an example to others."

Kara's forehead knotted into a frown. "Krypton wouldn't let her--"

"Also please do not publicly suggest that my mother's will is subject to the opinions of the Kryptonian government? Kara." He sighed. "You are not on Krypton right now."

"I noticed." There were frustrated tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and she blinked furiously to push them back. "I just wish I wasn't doing something so useless."

Mon-El shrugged. Daxam had been as it was now for many cycles, and it seemed a waste of energy to wish that it was different. "It's something they look forward to. That's not useless. I'm sorry," he added. Impulsively, truthfully. Wishing she wouldn't cry. "I know you hate it here."

She looked down at her hands. "I don't hate it."

"Don't make me keep reminding you that you're an awful liar." He pushed down a smile, and the urge to press his fingers to the tell-tale wrinkle that sat between her brows. "It's okay that you hate it. I'm going to try my best to make it less terrible for you. When I can."

"Okay." Her voice was quiet, spoken to the floor of the shuttle.

"And you only need to do one thing for me."

"Not yell at you so much?" Kara asked.

He smiled at her. "I would appreciate that, actually, but it's not the thing."

She feigned a thoughtful expression. "Don't insult your mother in public?"

"Yeah. Thank you. It would be incredibly embarrassing to have a headless wife."

There was a banging noise on the door of the shuttle, rattling the entire vehicle. They both jumped at the sound. Then the door swung open and Caile climbed into the seat beside him. "Ready to go, Your Highnesses?"

Mon-El glanced at Kara, and she nodded, wiping her eyes. 

"Ready."

It was a slow crawl of starts and stops through the narrow veins of the capital city. This tradition was ages old, and mostly symbolic by now. More Guardsmen would be loading wagons of their own, heading out to the parts of the city that Mon-El and Kara couldn't hope to reach.

The first few beings that left their homes and businesses to greet the shuttle did so with caution plain on their faces. Mon-El was mostly ignored. All eyes were on the foreign princess that they had come to glimpse, and Kara's nervousness showed in the tightness of her shoulders.

The first few sets of hands reached out for the wine, and Kara slowly relaxed. She turned on her welcoming smile, and greeted them all in slow, careful Daxamite. When prompted, the children gave her their names, laughing happily at the ones that she couldn't quite pronounce. 

Mon-El watched, with an emotion pressing on his chest that he didn't recognise. It wasn't jealousy, exactly. He wondered if his parents could even name a single one of the citizens that lived outside the palace walls.

"Am I doing okay?" Kara asked him, after they had traveled the first few halting blocks.

Mon-El nodded, uncomfortably aware that he was staring at her. "They like you."

Kara beamed, with a pride that lit up her whole face. "Do you think so?"

"You're easy enough to like," Mon-El said. Then fell silent, knowing he was on the verge of saying too much.

*

They continued their slow pace of travel through the city. In the early afternoon the shuttle stopped at a small hut that Caile swore was a restaurant, and the guard emerged a few minutes later with roasted meats piled onto long, flat leaves.

"Rao." Kara's eyes widened as she chewed and swallowed her first mouthful. "That is so good. Why can't we get anything like that in the palace?"

"I'm sure we can," Mon-El said, though he didn't have any idea what the food was called.

Dae-Lin looked fondly at her charge. "Her Highness enjoys her food, sir. You should take her out to the East Sea Festival when summer gets here."

Mon-El was saved from telling Dae-Lin that he wasn't likely to be taking his wife to such a notorious lovers' destination anytime soon by Kara's interested glance in her guard's direction.

"What's in the East Sea?" she asked, between mouthfuls of food.

"Fruit, mostly, Your Highness. They make cakes out of them. Pretty delicious, especially if you go at the right time."

*

The shuttle's first stop after lunch was a crowded pedestrian square. Kara looked around as they landed, and her face split into a smile of recognition.

"I know this street. The Kryptonian embassy is here."

They were swarmed by the curious crowd the moment that Kara stepped onto the ground. An old woman with her face creased deeply by many years of living pushed to the front of the crowd, lifting her voice to be heard. A tall, bearded man bumped into her, roughly. Kara frowned.

"Hey! One at a time!" She dipped her head obligingly in the old woman's direction. "I'm sorry. What were you saying?"

The words were repeated again, and Mon-El burst out laughing. Kara turned back to face him. "What? What did she say?"

"It's an old expression. She, uh, wished the gods' blessings on our house."

Beside him, Caile giggled. In fact the old woman had blessed a specific object of furniture, but Mon-El wasn't about to admit it.

Kara rolled her eyes. "It was something to do with sex, wasn't it?"

Mon-El shrugged. "No idea," he said innocently.

He was still looking at Kara when an angry shout drew his attention back to the crowd. The old woman had been pushed to the ground. The carafe she'd been given had fallen and broken, wine splashing onto the ground as the strangers around her reached out to assist her.

There was a glint of something bright and familiar on the edges of his field of vision. "Look out!" someone yelled. It must have been Kara, he would realise later.

He ducked instinctively towards his right, the side his guard should be on, just as he'd been taught in countless childhood drills. Caile had already drawn his weapon, pointing it towards the scrambling crowd, but he was too many steps away. Instead Kara was in front of him, taking his hand. Both of them were knocked backwards when the shot connected, so hard that Mon-El didn't immediately realise that he hadn't been the one hit.

It had been a shot from a concussive blast weapon, catching Kara in her side and knocking her backwards against the shuttle's frame. Mon-El struggled to rise from where he'd been thrown, but Caile's hand was on his shoulder, firmly holding him back.

"Get inside the shuttle, sir."

"Kara," he mumbled.

"She's breathing. Dae-Lin's got the shooter. Inside. I'll get her."

He shook his head. "I'll do it."

"Sir," Caile pleaded, his young voice cracking. "I have one responsibility."

The words kicked Mon-El into action. He dashed inside, and then Caile was behind him, holding Kara's pale, bleeding form. When the shuttle began to lift off the ground he could glimpse Dae-Lin through the window, holding the attacker down with a brutally efficient ease. The crowd was recovering from its initial shock, silently shrinking backwards. Soon the square would be crawling with guardsmen and the city police, looking to be certain that they had stamped the danger out.

*

By the time that the doctor met the shuttle as it landed, Kara was awake. Just barely, her eyes fluttering open and closed as she whispered his name.

"I'm here."

Kara lifted a shaky hand to touch his shoulder, and when she spoke her words were slow, not quite clear. "Are you. Okay?"

"I'm fine," Mon-El told her, grasping her hand. He didn't feel fine. He felt unsteady, in a way that he hadn't after any of the last attempts on his life.

"I'm glad. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you. Especially not because of me."

"Lunatics with guns in the middle of Daxam City aren't your fault," Mon-El began, exasperated, but her confused breaths and unfocused eyes told him that he was wasting his words. The palace doctor was there in the next minute. His assistants, silent men in their customary black, lifted her off the floor of the shuttle, as the doctor hovered a small holocrystal over her frame and frowned at the readout.

"She's Kryptonian," Mon-El told them inanely, as if the entire sector did not know that he had a Kryptonian wife. "She doesn't like--do not be too familiar."

The doctor clapped a hand on Mon-El's shoulder. "Please do not worry, Your Highness. We will take good care of your wife."

Mon-El's body tightened in a rush of unexpected anger. The doctor patted him comfortingly one more time, then turned away, as if unaware that he'd said anything insulting.

Looking after Kara was his responsibility. So far, he was failing miserably.

*

"You've suffered a mild shock to the brain. The best thing is for you to rest so that it can heal naturally."

Kara nodded dazed agreement, but Mon-El shook his head. "It's the ninety-sixth cycle. Surely we can do better than that."

"There is no large injury on the scans. No need for surgeries. Most aliens are unresponsive to our energy treatments."

"Then perhaps we should find a Kryptonian doctor."

The doctor shrugged, long used to the royal family's brusque demands. "If you wish. Rest can do wonders for every species. Including Daxamites," he added, peering closely at Mon-El's face as if he could divine Mon-El's health by counting the dimples and worried lines.

At this, Mon-El managed a smile. "You have been telling me this since I was young."

"Of course I have. You were a disobedient child, and now you're a disobedient adult."

Kara roused sleepily at this, from underneath the pile of blankets on her bed. "Wait. You knew Mon-El when he was a kid?"

She'd spoken in Kryptonian, seemingly without realising it. The doctor frowned, only picking Mon-El's name out between the unfamiliar words.

"I'll leave a holocrystal to monitor her. If she begins to act forgetful, or strange, please call me."

"Strange," Mon-El muttered. Every single thing that Kara did was strange. Leaping in front of a concussive weapon blast, for instance.

"Yes, sir. In the meantime, you will get into bed with your wife and keep her company while she rests."

"You're still ordering me around," Mon-El grumbled, rather than arguing. By the time the doctor left, Kara was fast asleep. Mon-El snuck out of the room as quietly as he could.

*

He didn't want to leave their quarters, in case Kara awoke. But Mon-El hated inaction, and he was terrible at waiting. He paced through the many rooms of his quarters, before settling in front of the window in the library, mechanically running through the combat forms he hadn't practiced in months.

"Your form is sloppy today, son."

Mon-El jumped at the unexpected sound of his father's voice, falling out of the pose that he'd been holding.

"I'm not going into a duel. I just needed something to do." The excuse slipped out before he could think better of it. His father nodded.

"Yes. Your wife duels for you, it seems. I heard about the incident in the city." 

Lar Gand strode across the room and reached out, drawing Mon-El in for a firm hug. Mon-El leaned into the gesture of comfort, incongruous to the haughty words.

"I'm glad you're well," Lar Gand said, and Mon-El nodded. He couldn't help feeling slightly unnerved at his father's rare appearance in his quarters. 

"Is Mother coming?"

"I don't believe so." Lar Gand's expression was cool, and calmly impenetrable.

"Father."

"It's nothing to worry about, Son."

"Father, please. What is she doing?"

Lar Gand shrugged. Losing interest, probably, in the whole topic. "She's called in the commanders of the city police. They're to restrict the movements of the aliens living in the city until this matter is settled."

"What matter? The assassin has been caught. The last time I saw him, Dae-Lin was sitting on his head."

"What if he wasn't working alone?"

Mon-El threw up his hands, and tried not to sound exasperated. "What if instead of a concussion blast gun, he'd been carrying fresh bread? Father, this train of thought sounds like a waste of time."

"It certainly is," Lar Gand agreed airily. "We already know who the culprits are."

Mon-El frowned. "We do?"

"Of course. The Kryptonians."

"Kara herself is a Kryptonian, and she was the one who got hurt the most."

"But she wasn't the target, was she?" his father pointed out. "You were. Or do you challenge the guards' report?"

Mon-El shook his head. "The guards are correct. But Father, you can't--"

Lar Gand raised his eyebrows in expectant challenge, and Mon-El left his sentence unfinished.

"One assassin is not the worst threat we face. Isn't maintaining an alliance with the Kryptonians the whole point of this ridiculous experiment?" Mon-El gestured with both hands to the quarters he'd been sharing with a stranger for the last fifteen days. The long woollen cape that kept Kara warm after dark was in this room where she had left it, folded neatly over a bench.

"Why should the Kryptonians safe in their cities have any opinions about how we deal with terrorists in ours?" his father demanded. "Honestly, Mon-El, this inanity makes you sound like one of them."

Mon-El squared his shoulders, staring his father in the eye. "If that's not what you wanted, perhaps you should have reconsidered making me the husband of one."

Lar Gand's jaw shifted and tensed. It was a familiar harbinger of anger, and Mon-El clamped down on the urge to flinch away. But in the next instant, all the signals of his fury had vanished without a trace.

"The first months of newlywed life is stressful, son. I forgive you." Abruptly he engulfed Mon-El in another embrace. When he pulled away, his eyes met Mon-El's in an uncompromising stare, a familiar expression that said he would tolerate no arguments.

"Perhaps if you visited your mother and I more often, you'd feel a bit more yourself. Come have breakfast with us this week. Kara may come as well. If she's sufficiently recovered from her adventure."

Mon-El had no intention of exposing Kara to his parents except when it was absolutely necessary, but he nodded silently. Lar Gand beamed, his mood shifting once more.

"I'm glad to see you're unhurt," Lar Gand said, kissing his only son briefly on the temple before he left.

*

The next morning Kara was up, and smiling. The bruises on her face had grown a deeper shade of purple while she slept, and she was not quite steady on her feet.

"Thank you." She'd nearly tipped over turning past a row of bushes in the gardens. Mon-El caught her as she tumbled. She tilted towards him as he steadied her, her face close enough to his that he could feel the warm exhalation of her small, embarrassed sigh.

Mon-El didn't answer. He watched as she stepped towards a row of small trees, studying the winter fruit that hung low enough to reach.

"They're ripe," she announced happily, pulling down a handful and biting into one immediately. 

If anyone caught him here, watching his wife do the work of a field servant, he might never hear the end of it. But it was early in the day, the leaves of the trees still damp from the morning rains, and they were alone. Kara extended her palmful of fruit towards him, but Mon-El shook his head.

Kara withdrew her offering, frowning. She swallowed down the fruit, the seeds cracking against her teeth, and wiped the juice from her mouth. "Are you mad at me?" she asked.

"No."

She paused, her eyes narrowing disbelievingly. "Mon-El."

"Does it matter to you if I am mad at you? You don't listen to anyone. Didn't your guards instruct you on what to do in the case of an attack in the city?"

"Rao, wait a moment. You're mad at me for saving you from getting hurt?"

Almost a full day after the incident, Mon-El found his panic had mutated into a burst of full-blown fury. "We have guards for a reason, Kara! You can't just go jumping in front of concussive weapons."

Kara stood with her feet planted on the narrow stone walkway, hips forward and shoulders straight as if she was expecting to charge into battle at any moment. She shook her head, expression obstinate. "I'm not afraid."

Mon-El rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's pretty obvious. Have you considered the possibility that it's not just about you?"

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning a lot of people want to see this alliance fail. Not just the Trethansi, or the Thanagarians. What do you think will happen to this alliance if a favourite daughter of Krypton is murdered on Daxam?"

Kara's tongue touched her upper lip, face twisting into a frown as she considered his words. "What about if _you_ were murdered?"

Mon-El shrugged. Few of his ancestors had lived into old age, and he found that the thought scared him much less. "That, at least, will be less likely to start a war."

"You sound like you don't believe you deserve to have anyone defend you," she said, and she seemed troubled by the thought.

He bristled at that. He didn't need her sympathy, or her pity. "You don't know anything about me or what I believe."

"Maybe you don't know much about me either."

That was true enough. Sometimes she seemed easy enough to read, but other times her motivation was as murky as the sea. "I know you don't have half the sense of a krel bull. They at least run away from trouble, instead of jumping in front of it."

"At least I'm not--" she began, but her words faded out in the next instant. Kara wobbled, and tilted dangerously towards the ground.

"Okay." Mon-El dashed forward to catch her, and she let him, resting her head weakly on his shoulder. "That is more than enough farming for one day. Time to rest."

"'S not farming," Kara mumbled into his shoulder, but she let him take her hand, resting most of her weight on his shoulder as he led her inside.

*

The doctor arrived in the afternoon. He squinted at the holodisplay on his scanner, and announced that Kara was improving. 

"You will be fine, Your Highness. Try to avoid any strenuous activity."

Mon-El stood in the corner, watching. He was vaguely aware that he was hovering, and of the petulant note of annoyance that he couldn't keep out of his voice. "Maybe she'll listen to you. She doesn't listen to me."

Kara scowled. "I might listen if you ever made any sense."

"How would you know if I make sense when you're never listening?"

The doctor coughed delicately, but the sound didn't deflate the tension in the room. Kara was glaring, and the doctor sighed as he began to withdraw. "Also try to avoid any strenuous emotions, hmmn? I can leave a prescription--"

"No," Kara interrupted.

"Hmmn." The doctor's attention had switched from Kara to Mon-El. He studied him carefully, as if he had the urge to hold his scanner to Mon-El's throat for a diagnosis. "Well, just remember that bad moods are not good for healing. And loneliness is not good for Daxamites."

"I'll be fine," Mon-El said.

"If I had a brick for every time a member of the royal family told me that, I could build a staircase to the sun."

An awkward silence fell over his rooms after the doctor departed. Kara looked over at him, her discontent still plain on her face. "You don't have to stay. I'll be fine." _Without you_ , was the clear, unfinished thought.

"Fine," Mon-El said, and he left the room.

*

In the wake of their argument Mon-El was feeling restless, and distrustful of words. He needed a distraction. Something physical, mindless and familiar. The holocrystal sitting on his desk clicked open a communication signal at his instructions, beamed into the home of a friend across town.

"How soon can you organise a garatta game?" Mon-El asked.

"Have you recovered from the last time you played garatta?" was the cheeky answer, said with a familiar lofty grin.

His unexpected fall into the ocean felt as if it had been weeks ago, and not three days. Mon-El wondered if all of married life would feel the same. Mon-El spread his arms in a clear challenge.

"Don't worry about me. Worry about your terrible scoring percentages.

The holographic face hovering above his desk brought his hands into view, combining a rude gesture with a wide smile. "Maybe you'd like to bet on it."

*

It was almost dawn when Mon-El returned to his quarters. When he stepped into the anteroom from the hallway, the air was oppressively warm, as if he had walked too close to a fire. The room was quiet. No doubt Kara had gone to bed hours ago, leaving the controls set to mimic a warm Kryptonian day. Mon-El sighed. "Cool," he told the room.

His side had won the garatta game by one narrow goal, and gone on to celebrate. He didn't remember ordering a second carafe of wine, or a third. But he was undeniably drunk, weaving through the curving maze of his quarters towards his bedroom. He stumbled, and almost tripped over his own feet, but a firm hand on his shoulder righted him again. 

"Var-Eth," Mon-El mumbled gratefully, "what would I do without you?"

"I don't know, sir."

He was suddenly struck by the realisation that he had no clear sense of how old Var-Eth was. Only that he had been an adult for as long as he'd been at Mon-El's side. He knew that the guard came from the outer northern islands, but not much more. Mon-El shook his head, distracting himself from the flash of guilt. "Have you ever been betrothed?"

"Yes, sir. And married."

Mon-El's brow creased at the unexpected answer. "How does that work? You spend all your time with me."

"I haven't seen the lady in years. I send her money every once in a while," Var-Eth added, correctly interpreting Mon-El's shocked silence. "She'd say she was better off without me, if you asked."

Mon-El couldn't imagine doing something so cruel, even if he'd wanted to. Even if the wife asleep in her room probably wouldn't miss him.

"How am I supposed to be married to a Kryptonian?" Mon-El asked out loud, a question aimed at no one in particular.

"I don't really get along with either marriage or Kryptonians, sir, so I'm afraid I'm not the right person to ask."

Mon-El blinked at this unexpected confession. "Var-Eth." Mon-El lingered on the sounds in exaggerated drunken, disapproval. "Var-Eth. Kryptonians aren't that bad."

Var-Eth said nothing.

"Though they're definitely annoying. And smug. And self-righteous." Intelligent. Honourable. Beautiful, not that Mon-El ever intended to tell her so.

"Perhaps you should leave some of that out of the love poetry," Var-Eth suggested, with familiar sarcasm.

Mon-El shook his head, and the room spun. "No, I never mentioned love."

"My mistake," the guard said in a pacifying tone, as he guided Mon-El towards his bed. Mon-El fell into bed, brimming full with thoughts of Kara and too drunk to dream.

*

Breakfast with his parents was silent and awkward, as expected. His father's mood was dark, untouched by his morning wine. He ate in silence, then left, headed in the direction of his stateroom.

"I would have thought the impending execution would have cheered him up," Mon-El said. The assassin still sat in the jails, and there had been no discussion of any other sentence.

His mother missed the sarcasm that flooded his voice. "That's not till tomorrow. He's grumpy because he was called away in the middle of the night. Some sort of event at the armoury."

"Event?" Mon-El repeated, questioningly.

"Someone broke in. Removed a displacement cannon." 

Mon-El's eyes widened. "Mother, those are dangerous."

"You don't have to tell me, Mon-El." Rhea shrugged, waving a hand airily. "It will be fine. Don't worry. Your father and I will restore order. One way or another."

Mon-El nodded, trying to ignore the look that had crossed her face. 

*

The next string of days passed much the same, in a welcome haze of booze. He'd been mostly sober since Kara's arrival on Daxam. But now, faced with the swell of disapproval that washed over his quarters, Mon-El was vaguely aware of falling back into old habits. 

One day Mon-El woke up from a string of drunken hours too long to count, and realised that he'd been married for nearly a month. This particular day had begun with a frustrating breakfast with his parents, who wanted only to ask him questions about his life with Kara. The answers to which, Mon-El reflected sourly as he ate, were none of their business. They'd heard about her morning trips to the gardens, and were demanding to know what Mon-El planned to do about Kara's unroyal behaviour.

As if there was anything Mon-El could do about a stubborn Kryptonian. He tore his bread into pieces with tense fingers. "She's doing much better, Mother, Father. Thank you for asking."

Rhea scowled. "Don't get me started on that episode of silliness."

"Kara had no business jumping in front of that terrorist," Lar Gand agreed. He was already at the bottom of the day's first carafe of wine, slouched forward over the table.

Not even to protect your son, Mon-El wanted to ask, but knew he might regret hearing their answer.

"Exactly right, my husband," Rhea sniffed. "But then, Kryptonians can't help showing off. The way that they're talking about her in the city? As if she's some sort of hero. It's ridiculous."

His mother put an ungraceful, disgusted stress on the word hero. Mon-El looked at her in surprise. "How do you know what they're saying in the city?"

"Please. You speak as if I'm haven't always been touch with the thoughts of our people."

Her eyes were darkening, a reflection of brewing anger, and Lar Gand threw his wife a worried, sideways glance. Mon-El fell silent, and turned back to his breakfast.

After the meal, he'd gone to the stables. There Pa-Ych had been sulking and petulant, flapping her wings as if to brush him away. Was every single woman on Daxam angry at him, Mon-El wondered, scratching patiently at Pa-Ych's scales until she quieted down.

* 

He hadn't been looking for Kara. He'd just been looking for a distraction that wouldn't argue back. He'd ended up slipping away from Var-Eth's notice and into this wing of the palace, sparring with a training hologram. It had been a long, satisfying workout. He hadn't expected to turn a corner of the looping hallway that led back towards the main wing, and find his wife arguing with a door.

It was the entrance to one of the many libraries that crowded this wing. Mon-El wasn't sure which one. He didn't think he'd ever been inside.

"Enter," she said, enunciating in Daxamite as clearly as she could. The palace stubbornly ignored the order.

"Can I help?"

Kara jumped in surprise. He thought he spotted guilt written on her face, but the expression instantly gave way to one of alarm. "Mon-El? Are you okay?"

Mon-El followed her gaze, and realised the knuckles of his left hand were bruised and bleeding. He hastily wiped the hand on the hem of his shirt. "Just some sparring practice."

Her mouth pursed unhappily. "Do you have any hobbies that aren't violent?"

Mon-El frowned at the question, then remembered she'd seen him come home with injuries from the garatta field more than once. The glitch in the force field hadn't been repeated, but being checked into the boundary still stung well enough to bruise. He shrugged, and didn't answer.

"Enter," he said, and the door slid open to reveal endless shelves of holocrystals. "Ah, we found some books. Very exciting."

Kara rolled her eyes at him, but for once the expression seemed mostly fond. "I was in the main library, and it, uh. Said what I was looking for would be here. But I thought I would have access."

It was unnecessary to explain to Kara how jealously Daxam guarded much of its knowledge, so Mon-El simply nodded. It was the reason that so much research had to be physically accessed directly here, rather than across the net from Kara's own holocrystal.

He still didn't know why it mattered, though, or which library they were in. "What are you researching?"

The shifty look crossed Kara's face one more time. "Oh. Nothing interesting?"

"You mean nothing you think I'd understand," Mon-El answered, his hurt making his tone unexpectedly sharp.

"I didn't say that!" she insisted, though it wasn't a denial of the sentiment. "I just don't want to bore you. You can go back to, um. Whatever you were going to do."

They stepped inside the library, and automatically the door slid closed behind them. Mon-El raised his eyebrows at Kara. "Okay, sure. How were you planning to get out?"

Kara made a small, uncertain shrug. "You could come back and get me?" 

"Seems way easier if I just stay here." Mon-El waved his hand over the closest crystal, and squinted at the display that resulted. "This looks like math. And--geology?"

"It's my uncle Jor-El's specialty," she explained. "He wanted me to send him some data. But it might take me a while to find the right ones."

Mon-El pulled his own holocrystal out of a pocket and set it on the nearest bench with a shrug. "You're right, that does sound extremely boring. I can occupy myself."

Kara nodded, and threw herself into perusing the room of books.

He'd opened his device to the novel he was in the middle of, but it was impossible to concentrate. His gaze pulled back to Kara every time his eyes sensed movement, as she flitted about the room. Immersed in her work, her mood had changed, and her whole body had shifted from the defensive, nervous posture that he knew.

*

She wanted to return to the library the next day. Caile and Dae-Lin exchanged knowing glances, when told that their charges would be safe without them in the furthest wing.

"They think we're--" Kara began as they stepped into the library, but couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence.

"Fucking," Mon-El agreed. It was a logical enough deduction. They were married, and going to a barely-used part of the palace to be alone. "I've never had sex in one of the libraries."

Kara shot him a look that was a cross between a glare and real, repressed laughter. "I wouldn't have thought there was any place you hadn't, you know, done it."

Mon-El grinned at her, inordinately pleased by the teasing. "I did it in the University observatory once. Does that count?"

"Ugh," Kara answered, smacking him lightly on the arm, but she was giggling.

*

On the third day Mon-El brought lunch. He'd made it himself, discomfiting all the servants when he'd shown up in the kitchens. It was a traditional Daxamite stir-fry, spicy and slightly burned at the edges. Kara thanked him, politely eating around the blackened vegetables at the bottom of their shared bowl.

"So, how long has your uncle been studying the earthquakes on Krypton?" Mon-El asked at the end of the meal.

She looked up in horror. "I never said--"

"Kara," he pointed out, as patiently as he could, "I was on Krypton. The ground shook every day. Now we're here in the geology library. I can figure the connection out, even if you think I'm an idiot."

She crossed her arms, shaking her head, and there was a flash of genuine upset on her face. "I don't think that."

"Okay."

"I don't!" she insisted. "I'm just not supposed to talk about it."

"Why not?"

Kara slowly thought over her answer, before she began to speak. "Kryptonians can be a little bit proud, sometimes."

Mon-El raised his eyebrows at her, silently asking if she thought this news was surprising, and Kara kicked him softly across the bench.

"Just, I don't think it would hurt to admit we don't know everything, you know? But not everyone on the council believes that. It makes it difficult for my uncle to do his research."

"It'll be okay," Mon-El told her, though he didn't quite know what he was promising, or what worry was causing her mouth to pull unhappily downwards, furrowing her cheeks.

"People think I'm betraying Krypton by being here. They think Daxam never brought us anything good, and why would it start now, but--" She stopped talking, abruptly, and pressed her mouth closed as if she might have said too much.

"You can trust me," he said softly.

Kara nodded, but she still seemed distracted, and Mon-El didn't know if she was hearing him at all. 

He didn't intend to kiss her. Or he hadn't, before the moment arrived. He'd been watching her discontented features, eyelashes fluttering over sad eyes, and wishing he could wipe her problems away even if he didn't know what they were.

He reached forward, stroked her cheek with his thumb, and then leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers. She was warm, her body arching towards him as her mouth opened to his.

It lasted for the barest of seconds before Kara flinched away from him, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She was quiet.

"I'm sorry," Mon-El said in the silence. 

"It's okay," she answered automatically, studying him with wide, reproachful blue eyes. "I just don't know why--I don't know, Mon-El."

He was filled with frustration, not for the first time, at the difficulty of communicating with an alien who didn't speak the same language down to the most basic concepts. "Daxamites don't always talk. Not just like that," he added, when Kara looked down in embarrassment. "I just wanted to tell you something."

Kara thought about this, her eyes still lowered. Then she looked up. "What did you want to tell me?"

Mon-El lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. If he had words, he would have used them. "I don't know. That you're not alone."

Kara bit her lip, hard enough to bruise, and Mon-El's whole body thrummed with the urge to kiss her again. She nodded. "Okay."

After that it should have been awkward in the library, but it wasn't, strangely enough. Kara went back to her research, as if she'd already forgotten about the kiss, and if she had Mon-El supposed it was for the best. His distracted eyes read the same sentence over and over, as he struggled to keep his focus on his book, and off the being that captured his attention every time that she moved.

*

On the fifth day Kara declared that she had picked out the most relevant texts, and piled them onto a small hoversled.

"I don't understand why a building like this doesn't use transport beams between the rooms," Kara complained as she gathered her work.

"One of my ancestors was assassinated with a bomb transported into his bedroom," Mon-El answered, though he knew she hadn't been expecting a real answer. "Transport beams inside the palace have been banned ever since."

Her eyes widened. "That's horrible."

Mon-El shrugged. "It was long before I was born."

"Still."

"My quarters," Mon-El said, and the robotic sled beeped obligingly and sped off. Mon-El held out his arm to Kara. She paused, nose wrinkling thoughtfully, then slipped her arm into his. 

"I started reading the books you gave me," she said.

Mon-El glanced over at her in surprise. He'd forgotten, truthfully. "What did you think?" 

"I don't know. I guess it's kind of violent. And sad?"

"Sad?" He'd never heard the works of Bel-Ac described as such. "It's not meant to make you sad. Bel-Ac was considered very controversial when he wrote it."

"He's stranded thousands of light years from his home planet. How could it not be sad?"

Mon-El mulled this over for a moment. "That's a very Kryptonian point of view," he said finally, and laughed when she poked him playfully in the side. "I just mean that maybe home is more than a matter of which planetary body you're standing on.

"Everything goes wrong when he leaves Daxam, but it was the choice he had to make. He didn't like being used as a piece in the gods' games, so he dropped out of them." Mon-El shrugged. "Bel-Ac was trying to say that it's pointless to serve a world that doesn't serve you back."

"Wow. That doesn't sound like something your parents would like people reading?"

"No," Mon-El agreed. "It's actually, um. Restricted literature."

Kara glanced at him in disbelief, her mouth dropping open. "Oh, Rao. Hang on. Did you give me subversive contraband on our first date?"

He smiled, pleased by watching the play of emotions on her face, though he had no idea what she was talking about. "You're speaking in code again," he said, then made a playful face at her as he dodged another jab of her fingers.

"Our first date! The first time we were together, you know. At my house."

Mon-El inclined his head, squinting in confusion. "We were together before that. At the chancellor's dinner."

"Okay, no!" Kara laughed. "That was not a date. A date has to be at least a little bit interesting. And preferably romantic. Don't tell me you don't have romance on Daxam."

"No, we have that." Mon-El gestured down the hallway in the direction they'd come from. "We were having fun in the library. Was that a date?"

"Hmmn, no. I think to be a date it would have to happen somewhere other than the place we both live in."

"So if I took you outside the palace, and we had fun, that would be a date?" Not into the city, he thought, still in chaos under Rhea's orders after the incident in the square. Somewhere else. He tried not to imagine kissing her again.

Kara shrugged, and ducked her gaze away from his, suddenly shy. "I guess it would."

They'd arrived at their rooms. The sled had arrived ahead of them, and now it sat outside the closed door.

"Enter," Kara said.

Their guards were seated in the anteroom, having a friendly argument over a game of dice. Caile leapt to his feet as they entered, but Mon-El waved them off.

"Sir. You have a guest, sir."

"I do?"

Kara had picked up an armful of crystals, and headed towards the curved corridor that would take her to the study. She vanished through an inner doorway, and then there was a yell, and a crashing sound.

Caile and Dae-Lin were faster than he was. When they dashed into the hall, they found Kara was standing there, unhurt. The floor was littered with the crystals that she'd been carrying, and she was blushing bright red.

She pointed towards the bend far down the hallway, where the entrance to Mon-El's room was just out of sight. "There's a naked woman? In our quarters?"

"That's what I was about to tell you, sir," Caile said, coughing apologetically. "Lady Esri is here."

Mon-El sighed. He looked at Kara, but her gaze shifted away as she refused to look at him. "Of course she is."

*

"I didn't invite you here." Mon-El was too irritated to feign politeness.

Esri spun around at his entrance. She shifted her hips to display her nakedness, and offered a cheeky smile. Her hair was loose, spilling down her bare back. "I need an invitation, now? I've missed you. Haven't seen you in so long."

Mon-El shook his head impatiently. "I saw you a few days ago, Esri."

"I don't mean in the taverns," she complained. She stepped forward, but Mon-El stepped back, lingering just out of her reach. "I've asked, you know. Asked every single one of our friends. No one has _seen_ you in over a month. Unless you've started going down to the whorehouses in the slums."

Mon-El was quiet, and the lack of response only seemed to further flame Esri's irritation. Her nostrils flared.

"It can't be that the Kryptonian is so alluring."

He didn't like the way Esri spoke of his wife, or the dismissive way that she refused to say Kara's name. "What if it is? You don't know anything about her."

"I hear what they say about her in the city. As if any Kryptonian has ever brought anything good to Daxam. I know that your parents sold our honour to our enemies. I know you seem to prefer her over your own people." She snatched up the dress that lay draped over the foot of his bed, her eyes flashing with anger.

"Don't call me when you regain your senses," was the final sentiment she spat as she left.

"Don't worry. I won't," Mon-El called, to her retreating shadow. 

*

Predictably Kara had retreated to her rooms, and was nowhere to be seen after Esri left. Mon-El took his dinner alone, with just his guard for company.

"Caile."

Caile glanced up from his own food with his usual startled expression. "Yes, Your Highness?"

"You grew up in Daxam City, right?"

The guard nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I've got family all over town. Eight sisters, sir, and they all still think I'm a baby."

"Eight?" Mon-El repeated, thinking he must have misheard.

"Yes, sir."

"How did that happen?" If pregnancy was rare on Daxam, accidental pregnancy was rarer still. The nobility didn't have large families because they had no desire to split up their wealth, but usually the rest of Daxam's citizens simply couldn't afford it.

Caile shrugged. "Guess they wanted a big family. I know it's weird, but it was nice."

Mon-El found himself wondering if Kara wanted the same, a family so obscenely large that people would gossip Multiple pregnancies that she would insist on carrying herself, her fat, swollen belly shocking everyone she passed.

"Sir?" Gently, Caile interrupted his daydreaming. "Did you want to know something about the city?"

Mon-El pulled himself back to reality. "Are they gossiping of Kara there?"

"Oh. I'm afraid so, yes. My sisters love weddings, and they've been following the pictures on the gossip readers. Princess Kara is so--" Here Caile paused, blinking in embarrassment.

"Beautiful," Mon-El finished matter-of-factly. "I noticed. Is that all that they're saying?"

Caile shrugged, hesitating. "I've told my sisters that I was there, and it wasn't like they're saying. But it seems like the story has grown a bit in the telling."

"Grown how much?"

"Supposedly she threw herself over your body to protect you from the blasts, sir."

"I see." Mon-El supposed it wasn't entirely inaccurate. 

"Then fought off four attackers," Caile finished. "Whether they were Kryptonian, Trethansi or some other race depends on who's telling the story."

Mon-El blinked. "Four attackers? There was only one."

"That's what I keep telling people. But people believe what they want. I guess they've given the princess a nickname, sir."

"Go on."

"Well, uh. They're calling her the Prethvi Princess."

"Prethvi?" Mon-El repeated, confused.

"Oh. It's a Lower Daxamite word, sir. It kind of means great? As in super, or, uh, marvelous."

Mon-El blinked, momentarily stumped into silence. "The people in the city are calling my wife the Super Princess."

Caile lowered his head apologetically. "Yes, sir."

That, Mon-El thought, made absolutely no sense. But he supposed that by now, things around Kara not making any sense was something that he should get used to.

*

The Super Princess was in the orchard the next day in her nightgown, momentarily distracted from picking her breakfast by the tiny, colourful birds that had flown across her path. She chased them in circles for a few minutes, watching as they hovered in mid-air, nibbling at the undersides of the morning leaves.

"How's your friend?"

Her voice was carefully modulated into polite blandness. Mon-El bit back a small smile. Only Kara could ask about his sex life, and sound like she was asking about the weather. 

"Mad at me, I guess."

Kara face broke into a charmingly fierce scowl, unexpectedly indignant on his behalf. "At you? Why?"

"Probably because I told her to put her clothes on and go home."

"Oh." The scowl eased, replaced by a familiar, concerned wrinkle. "Why would you do that?"

Mon-El shrugged. There was not much he could say. _Because you asked me to_ seemed weak, inadequate, even if it was the truth.

*

The slave arrived as Mon-El woke, carrying a breakfast invitation from his parents. Mon-El declined as peaceably as he could manage, and disappeared to the stables before the slave had time to return with any reply.

Pa-Ych was in a playful mood on this day, wings flapping happily as he fed her. It was a pleasant distraction, and Mon-El was stroking her sides, talking to her about nothing in particular, when he heard someone yelling his name.

Mon-El frowned, and leaned out of the stable stall. Dae-Lin was standing at the entrance, looking as distressed as Mon-El had ever seen her. "Your Highness!" she exclaimed, waving her hands in agitation when she spotted him. "Please. You must come immediately."

"What's the matter?" 

He could only think of one thing that could agitate a Guardsman. But if Kara was in trouble, he couldn't imagine what had possessed Dae-Lin to leave her side to come looking for him.

"She tried to leave the palace grounds, sir." Here Dae-Lin glanced back, an edge of reproach in her gaze. "Apparently she just found out what's going on. With the Kryptonians."

This clarified exactly nothing, and Mon-El simply followed Dae-Lin at breakneck pace towards the western gate. There he found Kara and Var-Eth, yelling at each other loudly. Var-Eth had one strong hand wrapped tightly around Kara's upper arm, yanking her towards him as she struggled to break away. Behind them stood a shuttle with waiting open doors.

It took Mon-El a moment to believe his own eyes. When he finally spoke, he didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.

"Var-Eth. Take your hands. Off my wife."

Var-Eth looked up, spotting Mon-El and dropped Kara as if his fingers were on fire. Kara stumbled, trying to catch her balance, and Dae-Lin rushed to her side to steady her.

One guard striking another was a crime with a heavy punishment. By the angry tint that darkened Dae-Lin's face as she glowered at Var-Eth it had been a near thing.

Var-Eth stood to attention, with only the angry tension in his jaw disrupting his appearance of calm. Mon-El stared at both of them until he could trust himself to speak. When he reached out towards Kara, he found that her hands were cold and shaking.

"What is going on?"

Kara was the first to speak, her eyes lifted defiantly towards him. "It's a Kryptonian prayer day. I want to go to the temple of Rao in the city."

"But there's a Kryptonian prayer room in the palace," Mon-El said in confusion. It had been specially built before her arrival, one of the Kryptonian ambassador's many, detailed demands.

Kara rolled her eyes, as if that wasn't the point. Which it wasn't, Mon-El supposed. She yanked her hands away from his. "I want to go into the city," she said, speaking slowly and clearly, staring him down. "To pray with other Kryptonians, as I have a right to do."

"Of course you have a right." Mon-El shook his head, puzzled. "The restrictions on aliens in the city don't apply to you."

" _I'm_ an alien!"

"No. You're the Crown Princess of Daxam."

"I don't want special treatment."

Mon-El turned his attention to Var-Eth, whose stony demeanor hadn't changed. Unyieldingly, he met Mon-El's stare. "The queen says travel for all Kryptonians is restricted until further notice, sir."

Mon-El breathed in, relieved to discover that this disagreement had an easy solution. "But she can't have meant for Kara to be included. I'll--"

"I don't want special treatment," Kara repeated loudly.

"--talk to her right now and clear this up."

Kara stepped forward, her hands on her hips, shoulders thrust forward, her entire body communicating her anger. "I think that's a great idea. Let's go talk to Queen Rhea."

Mon-El repressed a sigh. "I didn't mean--we've talked about the risks of agitating my mother."

"Seems to me as if she's already agitated," Kara shot back. "I'm not afraid of your mother."

"Seems to me as if you don't have the good sense to be afraid of anything," Mon-El answered, before he could think better of it. Kryptonians insisted that Daxamites were the more aggressive beings. Yet as far as Mon-El could tell, there was no fight so inadvisable that Kara Zor-El wasn't prepared to charge into it.

Kara flashed him a withering glare, then turned her back on him and marched off towards the palace.

*

They waited almost twenty minutes in Rhea's anteroom. Kara paced in restless circles, rubbing the deep red marks on her arm where Var-Eth's fingers had dug in.

Mon-El moved towards her, and abruptly Kara stopped pacing to avoid a collision. She glanced up, startled by the interruption. Mon-El gestured towards her arm.

"Did he hurt you?"

Self-consciously, Kara dropped her hand. "Your guard doesn't like Kryptonians."

"He'll be punished," Mon-El promised, and Kara sighed, sounding very tired.

"I don't want anyone to be punished. I want to go to the temple. I can't believe that you knew this was happening."

He'd been trying to protect her, but Mon-El knew she wouldn't understand. "Perhaps I was worried that you'd cause a scene."

"Wanting to do what's right isn't causing a scene!"

They were still arguing when Rhea finally emerged from her inner rooms. "Mon-El," she said, and he quieted immediately, mid-sentence. "What is so important that I had to be disturbed?"

"My guard is claiming that you've banned Kara from going into the city. I told her that this must be a mistake."

Rhea arched her eyebrows. "Well, of course it's a mistake."

"I told you so." Mon-El looked at Kara in relief.

"I assumed Kara had been told weeks ago. We can't have the most famous Kryptonian in Daxam be seen to be breaking the rules, can we? The people won't understand."

"You can't do this," Kara insisted.

Mon-El sucked in a breath. "What Kara means to say--," he began, but Kara cut him off.

"I can speak for myself."

Rhea tilted her head towards Kara in acknowledgement, a touch of amusement on her lips. "Of course you can, child."

It was a cruel dare as much as it was an invitation, but Kara didn't seem to recognise it. "You signed a treaty."

"So did your people. And yet here you are, as their representative, causing trouble on _my_ planet."

Kara glanced over at Mon-El, as if she were looking for help. Mon-El found he wasn't sure what she expected him to say. "It's temporary. Isn't it?"

His mother shrugged, barely acknowledging the weak interjection. "Unless I decide otherwise."

Kara's hands balled into fists. Almost as if she wished she could beat Rhea into a more reasonable position, and Mon-El watched her in worth. His mother, he knew, could defend herself. But he couldn't defend Kara from his mother, or from any punishment. He felt helpless.

"We wouldn't treat the Daxamites like this, on Krypton." Kara's eyes flickered back to Mon-El for an instant. "Any of them."

"That's very naive of you. Do you think any of the Daxamites on Krypton have easy lives? Among beings who imagine themselves so superior to everyone?"

"We don't," Kara insisted, but his mother waved her hand dismissively.

"Mon-El," she said, though the rest of the thought went unspoken. _Get out._

"Yes, mother," Mon-El said, taking Kara's hand and ushering her firmly out the door.

*

The atmosphere in his rooms had been lighter for the last dozen days, but now it was once again uneasy. He'd banished Var-Eth temporarily to the Guardsmen's barracks, something he couldn't remember ever having had to do before. A new guard appeared in his place, arriving just as night fell. Even younger than Caile, as far as Mon-El could tell, and most definitely female. 

"My name's Beilat, Your Highness." She was shyly polite, unfazed at his surprise. "The commanders thought I could get some experience, while Var-Eth works off his punishment. Since you're the only noble who doesn't mind--"

"--female guards," Mon-El finished for her.

"Yes, Your Highness. Plus Caile says you're actually--" She broke off mid-sentence once again.

Mon-El waited.

"He says you're really a lot nicer than the rest, sir."

He stared at her, but she didn't seem to be anything besides perfectly serious. "Beilat. If you're going to work in the palace, you might want to get a little bit better," here he held up his right hand, fingers close together, "At not repeating everything you hear?"

She blushed. "Yes, sir."

When Caile arrived the next morning he was upset, nearly inconsolable.

"I'm so sorry, Your Highness."

When Mon-El sat on the bench nearest his bedroom window, turned to a certain angle, he could make out the figure of Kara, wandering through the orchards. Reluctantly Mon-El took his eyes from the view, frowning at Caile. "Sorry for what?"

"Ah." Caile stuttered, suddenly uncertain. "The princess didn't mention it to you?"

"The princess isn't talking to me," Mon-El answered, shrugging. "What exactly should she have said?" 

Caile took a deep breath, then launched into the confession. "One of my sisters lives in one of the alien neighbourhoods, sir. She doesn't mind, in fact she's been quite upset at all the police there lately, when good beings are just trying to go about their--"

"Caile, is there going to be a point?"

"I thought Princess Kara would want to know about the Kryptonians." Caile expelled the entire sentence in one anxious rush of air.

"You told her," Mon-El said.

"Yes. Sir."

It hadn't occurred to Mon-El to wonder what had motivated Kara on that particular day, but he supposed he should have guessed. "Okay," he said, his gaze drifting back to the window. Kara was headed back to the palace now, but she paused every few paces to examine the fragile flowers that were blooming in the wet winter dirt.

"Okay?" Caile repeated faintly.

He'd been expecting a punishment, Mon-El realised, or at least a verbal scolding. He shrugged. "She was going to find out sooner or later."

And perhaps it should have been sooner. Mon-El wasn't too used to feeling guilty, but there was no other explanation for the sense of irritation that sat at the base of his brain. But his actions couldn't have changed anything, Mon-El reminded himself.

The world was how it was.

"Sir?" Caile asked worriedly, and when Mon-El looked up he realised his eyes had been closed. He was swaying in his seat at an awkward angle. Mon-El blinked, trying to clear his vision, but the room was still swollen in front of him. 

"I can call the doctor," Caile offered.

Mon-El shook his head. 

*

"You look pale," Shi told him later.

Mon-El made a face at Shi's image, projected by the holocrystal into his bedroom. It was set to display an image that was life-sized, and in it Shi was staring at him with familiar concern. "You think all non-Mahadians look pale."

"That's true," Shi agreed. He was currently flushed a bright blue that matched the painted walls behind him. "But I know you well enough to know what colour _you're_ supposed to be, and this isn't it."

He pointed at Mon-El, thrusting a hand forward in the projection as if he might be able to touch him, and test Mon-El's well-being for himself.

"Maybe it's all this stress."

"Stress!" Shi repeated. His laughter was a thin, croaking sound. "When have you ever been under stress? Is married life that bad?"

"It's complicated," Mon-El said, and told the story as quickly as he could.

When he finished, Shi was staring at him thoughtfully. "That does sound complicated."

"It's a mess."

Shi nodded. "But it sounds as if the Kryptonian may have a point."

"Of course she has a point." Mon-El answered the obvious statement with mild irritation, covered up with a smile. "It's not about who's right and who's wrong."

"Isn't it?"

The question caught Mon-El off-guard, stunning him into momentary silence. "I didn't know you disapproved of our ways so much," he said, finally.

Shi's eyes flashed their normal soft brown, a Mahadian shrug. "Doesn't matter what I think."

"It doesn't matter what I think, either."

"Doesn't it? I'm not suggesting a full-blown revolution," Shi added, at Mon-El's horrified expression.

"I'm glad," Mon-El joked. "I thought you liked my head where it usually is."

Now Shi's colours shifted to a range Mon-El knew as sorrow, and Mon-El had to glance away to hide the uneasy itch under his skin. He didn't need his friend to feel pity for him. When Shi spoke, his voice was too soft. "Your mother rules by fear, Mon-El. But that isn't the only way."

Perhaps that was true on Mahad, and true on Krypton. Shi seemed to sense his mood, and changed the subject.

When he said goodbye to Shi and disconnected the conversation, night had fallen. Kara's frustrated rage had given way to the silent treatment. Kara avoided speaking to him as much as she could. Instead she spent most of her time browsing geological statistics in the study, or making holocalls to Krypton. Snatches of her conversations drifted out into the corridors, spoken in Kryptonian too fast for him to catch. 

Some days their quarters were dead silent, her bedroom doors remaining stubbornly closed. Mon-El would later realise that Kara's quietude had been an obvious sign of warning.

*

He was crossing the courtyard on his way to the stables when he first heard the yelling. Mon-El changed direction, moving towards to the noise, and found himself at the southern gate.

"Your Highness, I can't let you go out there." He didn't recognise the Guardsman that blocked his path, bowing slightly as he did so. "Makings of a riot, sir."

Mon-El frowned. It didn't sound like a riot, but simply a handful of voices raised in distress. "I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Sir."

"Just stay on my flank," Mon-El ordered, and slipped out of the gate.

Outside he found a small number of beings, clustered together. Not much more than a dozen, with a handful of aliens among them. They all fell silent when the gate opened, warily watching the guards that had followed him.

"What's going on?" Mon-El asked.

Only one woman answered. She was Daxamite and very young, perhaps still a teenager. Her chin rose bravely as she stepped forward, but her voice still shook in her distress. "Your Highness," she said, and fell into an elaborate bow. She spoke slow, careful High Daxamite. "Please. You can't let them take her?"

"Take who? Where?"

"Sir, please." The guard who had attempted to block Mon-El's path spoke up again. "Please step aside."

There was an audible current of fear running through the crowd. Mon-El looked over his shoulders, and found that six more guards had joined them, hands resting on their blast weapons.

Mon-El took a deep, steadying breath, shooting the guards warning glances, and shifted his body so that he stood directly in front of the crowd. He turned back to the young Daxamite focusing all his attention on her. "Explain to me what's happening."

The girl's upset was only growing. "The princess! They took the princess, sir?"

Mon-El shook his head at this unexpected mention of Kara. "The princess is in the palace. She's safe."

"No," the girl insisted, and the sound spread through the group like a chorus. "She was in the city."

Mon-El opened his mouth to answer again in the negative, and then stopped. He hadn't seen Kara all day, he realised. He struggled to keep the thought off his face, trying not to curse. "What was she doing in the city?"

The girl blinked up at him, caught off-guard by the question. "She went to the hospital, Your Highness? The alien hospital. People have been scared to go there since--" She broke off, aware that she facing the prince of Daxam and perhaps saying too much.

Now a H'lai man spoke up out of the group. "The City police, sir. They ordered everyone but the sickest to go home, and grabbed Her Highness. They said it was by order of the queen."

The H'lai's movement had grabbed the fresh attention of the guards. Mon-El caught their blur of action out of the corner, as the closest reached for the concussive gun that he wore at his waist.

"Stop!" he yelled, as loudly as he could. 

Everyone froze.

"Go home," he said to the H'lai man, glancing among the faces of the aliens and Daxamites standing with him. "All of you."

"But, please--"

"I'll take care of it," Mon-El promised. Gently, sincerely, knowing that Kara wouldn't want any of these people injured on her behalf. "I promise. But first, you need to go home."

The group looked among each other, muttering worriedly. Perhaps they didn't believe him. Mon-El couldn't blame them. He remained rooted in place until the reluctant crowd had melted away, and then he took off running to the palace jails, as fast as he could go.

*

Until he arrived at the jail, he thought it might all be a misunderstanding. But when he had blustered his way through the guards on duty, she was there.

The jails had stood in their current location for half a dozen cycles. They'd been rebuilt by his great-grandmother to house a sizeable fraction of the nobility after a failed coup, and in the current design looked more like a hotel than a prison. Kara sat on comfortable furniture, next to a window with a view, but the illusion was ruined by the blinking warning lights that marked the boundaries of the invisible field hemming her in.

"Kara." At the sound of his voice she turned look at him.

"Mon-El," she said, and then didn't seem to know what to say next.

"What were you doing in the city?" Mon-El asked. It was the first question that came to mind, and the exact wrong thing to say.

Kara face flushed with familiar anger. "Is that all you care about?"

"No," he admitted. He stepped as close to her as he could, close enough to feel the energy buzz of the force field between them. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

She didn't answer the question, still staring at him with eyes that were challenging, yet filled with a weird, bright hope. Mon-El couldn't think of what reason she had to be hopeful. "Can you get me out of here?"

"You know I can't." Mon-El's throat cracked on the words. "My mother--"

Kara turned her back on him, as she lapsed into irritated silence and returned to facing the windows.

Mon-El watched her for a long time without speaking. She didn't belong here, and not just inside the cell. 

"I'll contact Krypton immediately," he said.

He'd spoken into the quiet, and caught her off guard. Kara whirled on her feet to face him. "What?"

Forced to repeat himself, he spoke more firmly this time. "I'll call your parents, Kara. They'll come to retrieve you. Won't they?"

Kara shook her head. She was growing angrier. At him, thought Mon-El . "You know they will, and you know they'll come with war ships. We'll destroy you before the Thanagarian alliance even get here."

"Maybe we'll deserve it," Mon-El answered, matter-of-factly.

"Mon-El, no. People will get hurt."

He clenched his teeth, biting down on the shock that had transmuted into a barely leashed desire for something to fight. "Can you ever just worry about yourself?"

"It's not that bad, Mon-El. So I'll spend a few nights in here." She gestured to the window that looked towards the ocean. "With this lovely view, and then your mother will see reason."

"Of course. That's what they call her, all across the galaxy. Rhea the Reasonable." Abruptly Mon-El sat on the floor, crossing his legs and stifling a yawn.

Kara's eyes opened wide in surprise. "Um. What are you doing?"

"If you're so excited about sleeping here, I guess I am too. No matter the shelter, remember?" He was quoting the Daxamite marriage vows.

"That's not necessary?" Her voice arced up at the end, turning the sentence into a question.

Mon-El shrugged, and Kara shook her head.

"You can't just sleep on the floor."

"We can't all be jailbirds." Mon-El made a show of thinking this over. "I could get myself arrested, then we'd have adjoining cells. With matching beds."

Kara managed a small, disapproving laugh. 

"I was arrested once. On Sedenach. Did you know they have a law against public nudity?" He told the story, only slightly embellished, and she listened despite the obviousness of his distraction attempt. Mon-El dropped the subject of rescue. He could broach it again in the morning.

*

Sometime in the middle of the night Var-Eth had arrived, armed with pillows, and a blanket. Mon-El woke to find himself swaddled in the plush bedding, like a baby.

"I should have known I'd find you here."

Rhea paused in the doorway, frowning at the scene that she'd found. She looked perfectly composed as always, dressed as if for a state visit. A cadre of guards stood behind her. Mon-El didn't recognise any of their faces.

Her eyes were cold and dark. Mon-El took a deep breath. Kara stirred in her cell, standing to face the queen, her posture betraying no nervousness. Mon-El hadn't realised that she was awake.

"Where else would I be?" Mon-El asked. He stood, regarding her with as much certainty as he could manage, and hoped he didn't appear nearly as shaky as he felt.

"Not hanging around a seditionist, I should hope." Rhea looked at both of them with disdain. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, given the troublemakers in her family tree."

Kara stared Rhea down from inside her cell, managing to look fearless and vulnerable all at once. "My Aunt Astra has nothing to do with this."

Mon-El shook his head, lost in confusion. There'd been no Astra at his wedding, he was almost certain.

Rhea sighed. "It's unfortunate. I wanted the best for you, my son. We'd assumed they would choose a Kryptonian of good breeding. But perhaps there's no such thing."

The guards were all standing to attention, still as stone. Props to some play, Mon-El thought, but he couldn't decode the message. There was a fuzziness marring the edges of his vision, and Mon-El blinked it away.

"Mother--" _That's enough_ , he'd opened his mouth to say, but the words died on his lips. "What do you want?"

He moved closer to her, meaning to put himself between Rhea and Kara, to hold the queen's attention. He found his steps were uncertain, and his legs unexpectedly weak. Rhea was frowning at him, and Mon-El drew breath to repeat his words.

"What--" he began. The room was fading, tilting on its axis. The energy barrier shimmered, momentarily lighting up the entire room. Mon-El was vaguely aware that Kara must have made contact with it, and been stung in rebuke for her trouble. She was saying his name over and over, and he turned towards the sound.

It was nice, he thought distantly, that she worried about him. Even if she wasn't very good at being worried over in turn. Var-Eth had appeared at elbow, attempting to steady him. His mother was shouting orders, with a distinct note of panic Mon-El didn't think he'd ever heard before.

"Don't be so mad," Mon-El whispered, to no one in particular, and then he pitched forward into his guard's arms.

*

Mon-El drifted back to consciousness in his own bed, with a pounding headache. The palace doctor hovered over his bed, his greying beard the focal point in Mon-El's field of vision.

"Ah," he said, with a note of relief. "There you are."

"Where else would I be?" Mon-El asked, then sat up abruptly as his memories of the jail returned in a flood. "Wait, how long have I been--"

He stopped, realising he didn't exactly know what had happened to him. He knew he was in his own bed. The sky outside was a deep orange, reflecting a rapidly sinking twilight.

"Just a few hours. Please do not worry. Everything is as you left it."

Which meant that Kara was still in the jail. Not quite a relief, but better than most of the alternatives.

The doctor was watching him carefully. "Well? Aren't you going to ask me for the diagnosis?"

Mon-El glanced away, saying nothing.

"Your Highness." The doctor sighed heavily, and left the rest of his lecture unsaid.

"I know. Look. Can we just, not tell my parents?"

This time the doctor's sigh was strained, verging into sadness. "Your Highness, you know you cannot ask me this."

"They'll blame Kara."

"Shouldn't they?" the doctor asked him, after a moment's confusion. "If she had performed her duties--"

"I don't want her to be _dutiful_ ," Mon-El protested, with more emotion than he'd meant to show. He was a Daxamite, and he wasn't embarrassed by discussions of sex. But the topic of Kara, he'd found, made him shy in ways he didn't expect, and couldn't begin to find the words to explain.

"I see," the doctor said, though Mon-El knew he didn't understand at all. "Well, there are plenty of constellations in the sky, as they say."

Mon-El didn't want that either, but couldn't manage to draw breath to say so, as yawns overtook his whole body. 

The doctor shook his head. "I can prescribe a synthetic hormone. It won't be a true solution, I'm afraid. Your body knows the difference."

"I understand."

The doctor hesitated before adding, "I have a grandson, and a granddaughter. I'm sure either would be willing--"

Mon-El grimaced, cutting the old man off. "I think I'm just going to pretend you didn't say that."

"Very well, Your Highness."

Mon-El nodded vaguely as he fell back into a dazed sleep.

*

When he awoke Var-Eth was in his room, communicating his disapproval entirely through dark stretches of silence. The glowering looks only worsened when he asked after Kara. 

"I'm sure the Kryptonian is fine," he muttered. Then his expression froze in uncharacteristic startlement as Mon-El threw his blankets from his bed and began to rise, with laboured effort.

"I'm going to check on my wife," Mon-El insisted, his breath coming in short gasps as he struggled to stay on his feet. Var-Eth's voice sounded far away, as if Mon-El was sinking underwater.

The guard sighed. "Please get back into bed, Your Highness. I will send Dae-Lin to the jails to make a report."

"Thank you, Var-Eth."

"It will give her something to do. She's been moping all day, anyway," Var-Eth added, as he guided Mon-El back into bed. "In the meantime, Your Highness, I could summon someone?"

Mon-El didn't say anything, and Var-Eth fell back into a scolding silence.

*

"Mon-El. I'm told you're being unreasonable."

Mon-El moved to stand at the sound of his father's voice, trying to rise out of his bed, but he didn't get very far. It was the third day of his illness. He had never been this sick in his life, that he could remember. He could barely keep hold of a thought from one moment to the next.

"Unreasonable like having a member of the royal family arrested?" he mumbled, as he fell back into a seated position.

Lar Gand shrugged. He was clear-eyed and dead sober, a state that Mon-El knew always made him all the more unpredictable. "Marriage or no marriage, you can't expect us to simply let Kara Zor-El run through the streets without discipline. Her very presence seems to rile the masses for some reason."

"She's a good person," Mon-El said.

"She's a bad influence," Lar Gand answered, his lips pursing. "On you most of all, it seems."

Mon-El was silent. He felt unusually cold, his body shivering. His father watched him with concern.

"Surely you don't intend to--my son. You know that this will only get worse."

"If you're so worried about me, perhaps you should let my wife return to our quarters."

His father's eyes flashed with something akin to amusement. "Blackmail, son?" 

Mon-El shrugged. He would have tried the tactic, if he thought his parents would be likely to choose anything over their own pride. He shook his head. "Not everything is a gambit, Father."

"Hmmn. Perhaps you should remember that the Kryptonian is the one who got you into this mess."

"The Kryptonian is the only thing that has been tolerable about the last fifty days." It was another thing that he hadn't meant to say. His head was pounding, and he could hear his own words coming out slurred and broken.

Lar Gand was staring, as if he'd never seen his own son before. Perhaps he never had.

*

Strictly speaking, no Daxamite had ever died of loneliness. Eventually his body would adjust to the hormonal imbalance and his weakness would fade into a background discomfort, though it would never vanish. There were stories of lonely Daxamites falling victim to further illness, or being challenged to duels that their fevered bodies could not hope to win.

Strictly speaking, no Daxamite had ever died of loneliness. In the worst moments of his illness Mon-El wondered sincerely if he might be the first.

*

The first woman arrived after his father's visit. She simply let herself into his room, and into his bed, offering herself without making a sound. 

"Um." Mon-El hadn't heard her enter, and he jerked back in surprise, nearly knocking her off of the bed.They both started at each other for a moment, in equal surprise. "Hi. Who are you?"

"Itri, Your Highness." The woman lowered her eyes respectfully. "His Majesty sent me."

"Oh, okay, nope. Not happening." Mon-El rose awkwardly to his feet, pulling Itri with him. Unresistingly, Itri moved with him towards the bedroom door, as he led her with a hand on her shoulder.

She was shaking her head in confusion. "The king says you are lonely."

"I really wish people would refrain from spreading that around."

"But." At the door she planted her feet, and the perplexion on her face had been overtaken by something akin to fear. "Sir, you do not understand. The king _sent_ me."

She was reluctant to return to the king with bad news, Mon-El finally understood. "That's--look, just tell my father we fucked. Multiple times, copious orgasms."

Now Itri simply looked horrified. "I cannot lie to the king!"

"You think the copious part is too much?" Mon-El asked, and then sighed. "Look. Don't take this the wrong way, but my father doesn't care about you. He's probably already forgotten you exist."

It took a few minutes more cajoling to convince Itri to leave, with a promise to stay out of the king's way until she was certain that her disobedience had been forgotten.

If the doctor's medicine was working, Mon-El couldn't tell. His head was still throbbing, and his pulse still raced too fast through feverish veins. Mon-El still couldn't think straight. There were more guests that streamed through his door, but in the morning Mon-El would only remember that none of them had been Kara, and that he'd turned them all away.

*

"Sir, I can't let you roam the palace alone. What if you faint again?"

Caile's young face was distressed, the guard keeping pace with Mon-El's ginger steps away from his door.

"There's nothing to worry about." Mon-El knew the confidence he was trying to project was ruined by the hoarseness in his voice. "I'm not crossing the galaxy. I'm going to the north wing."

"The library wing?" Caile asked, in plain confusion.

"Yes."

"I'll come with you, sir."

"You will stay here," Mon-El insisted, "and tell everyone that there is nothing to worry about."

Caile's eyebrows rocketed upwards in an expression of alarm. "Nothing to worry about, sir?"

"Exactly."

*

Slowly Mon-El made his way through the maze of the palace hallways, ignoring the confused and curious looks directed his way. When he arrived at the geology archives, the room was just as he and Kara had left it. 

"Warm," Mon-El ordered the room as he entered. Perhaps he'd gotten used to warmer temperatures over the past few weeks, and unable to sleep in the winter chill. Perhaps it was just the fever that racked his body, and made everything seem cold.

Mon-El lay down on the nearest long bench, curled up, and closed his eyes. He slept intermittently, waking half a dozen times from vivid, disorderly dreams. Each time he came to with the faint impression of Kara's face in front of him, as vivid as a star.

"Kara."

"Mon-El." The vision spoke aloud, and then there was a gentle hand on his arm. 

When his eyes sprang open, she was still there in front of him. "Kara? How--" He couldn't focus.

Kara answered the litany of unspoken questions. "Your guard sent me here. After your father released me. He said--he said that you need me."

"That's not true." Weakly, Mon-El flinched away from her touch.

Kara pulled her hand away, her eyes flashing their deepest blue. Mon-El recognised the sentiment on her face.

It was determination. 

She glanced around at the empty room, and then pointedly back at him. "I don't believe you."

"Maybe I don't care what you believe."

"Maybe I don't believe that, either."

He was shivering again, and unable to muster a response. Kara's gaze softened. Mon-El looked away, feeling like he was drowning under the weight of her long, compassionate stare.

"Mon-El, we're married," she said to him.

"I remember." He coughed. 

"You're the one who keeps pointing that out. I know it means something to you that I don't understand yet. But if it means you get to worry about me, then I get to worry about you too."

"In fairness," Mon-El pointed out, his voice scratchy and weak, "you don't really let me worry about you anyway."

The shivers were getting worse, wracking his entire body. Kara stood, and shucked off the warm cape she'd been wearing over a simple shirt and pants. She began to undress.

"Kara." The whispered protest was weak. Mon-El couldn't look away.

"They told me sometimes any kind of close contact can help. Skin to skin. Is that true?" 

"I don't know."

"Okay." She shucked her pants to the floor, then loosened the clasp on uncomfortable looking Kryptonian undergarments and slid out of them, into brazen nakedness. "Let's try it?"

She lay down on the bench facing him, huddled in close, and pulled her cape over both of them like a blanket. She rested her hands against his waist, and then her touch timidly slid upward, underneath his shirt. "Is this okay?"

"Kara." He didn't have any other words. She was so, so warm. He couldn't help leaning into her, as his cold, trembling body leached as much heat as it could.

She was quiet for a long time. Mon-El wasn't sure if he drifted off to sleep, but when he opened his eyes again, the chills were easing. She was watching him, with an awed, careful stare.

"Better?" she asked him.

"A little."

"Good."

When she leaned forward her kiss was gently hesitant, but it still caught him by surprise. Her mouth was sweet when his lips parted against hers. Her right palm still lay underneath his shirt, flat against his torso. He wondered if she could feel how hard his heart was thudding in his chest, knew his own breaths were quickening, and becoming uneven. She radiated heat everywhere that she pressed her body against his. From her mouth, and her fingertips, and the part of her thighs. He breathed a shaky sigh as he broke the kiss. She drew her tongue across wet lips, staring at him.

"Mon-El?"

"Kara. You're a virgin. Aren't you?"

She tilted her eyes downward, caught in embarrassment. "Yeah, I--we do things differently on Krypton. I know maybe it won't be what you're used to."

"I just don't want you to hate me," he admitted.

"Counterpoint," Kara whispered. "I could never hate you. I know, because I tried."

"I see." Mon-El leaned in, kissing the small smile lines at the edges of her mouth. "I'm sorry that didn't work out for you."

She giggled, exhaling small puffs of breath against his cheek. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. "We've tried it the Kryptonian way. Maybe it's time for you to show me what a Daxamite marriage is."

All his words and laughter caught in his throat. "I can do that," he whispered softly, before he kissed her.

She stripped him of his clothes very carefully, as if she feared that she might hurt him. Mon-El pulled her back down into his arms, until they were lying side by side. He pressed forward for another kiss. He stretched a hand downwards, brushing his knuckles between her legs and realising, abruptly, that he had no idea how dissimilar to a Daxamite woman she might be. He moved his fingers across her body experimentally, until she made a small, unexpected noise, clutching him tighter.

He lost track of time as he held her. His fingers moved shallowly inside her, keeping pace to the hypnotic sounds of her breathing.

"Mon-El." She was thrusting lightly against him, making small, helpless gasps. "You can--I'm ready." 

"Hmmn. Can I?"

"Yes. Oh--Rao." She was shaking around him. "Please."

"And which one of us is the expert here?"

She buried her face against his chest, the already shaky rhythm of her breathing distorted by silent laughter. "Mon-El."

He tilted her face towards his, capturing her mouth for a kiss, and their twined bodies laughed together. "Yeah, that's the right answer."

"It's just that, um. I was under the impression this was an emergency." She punctuated her words with quiet moans.

He breathed in the scent of her, struggling to keep his own words even. "We're going to get to the emergency, don't worry."

"You make a lot of promises," she said, and then her thighs tightened around his hand, and she was clinging to him, her whole body shaking. She made a small noise of surprise in his ear, and he held her through the waves.

By the time he finally slid inside her she was a mess, breathless and trembling in his arms. Mon-El could feel his own blood rushing too quickly through his veins. He'd been ill for days, and his body was still weak, but this was a sickness of a different kind.

She'd wrapped her arms around him, hanging on as hard as she could and whispering in Kryptonian into the crook of his neck. Babbling mostly nonsense, by the sounds that he could follow. He kissed her temples as he relaxed into his rhythm, lost in the sensation of her, and then he was coming apart, and feeling as if he was untethered, falling through space.

*

When he came back to himself the windows were letting faint streaks of light into the room, signaling daybreak.

"How are you?"

"I should be asking you that." Kara screwed up her face as she considered the question, pulling her cape up over bare shoulders. "I'm hungry? I think sex makes me hungry."

"That's easy enough to fix." He moved to sit up, but she stopped him with one hand in his shoulder.

"Mon-El?"

"Hmmn?"

"People kept telling me. Warning me that Daxamites weren't supposed to be lonely. I just thought that they meant, you know. Emotionally."

"Strictly speaking," he said, gently pressing his forehead against hers, "we're not great with that either."

"But I don't understand why you didn't, um. Take care of yourself? You're usually the most self-centred person I know."

Mon-El choked on a surprised laugh. "Did you get my father to break you out of prison just so you could insult me?"

A half-smile flitted across her face. "Maybe."

"Okay, well. Maybe I just wanted to prove I could do it."

"Do what?"

"Be more like the kind of husband you wanted." He shrugged, knowing that his explanation might not be enough. Kara's face, carefree when he'd woken up, was now creased in concern and unhappiness.

"I never wanted you to get sick," she said.

"I know," he told her. 

"I would never--"

"Kara. I know."

There was a banging sound from outside the room, against the door, and Mon-El jumped.

"Don't worry," Kara said, as she rose and hastily reached for her clothing. "It's just Dae-Lin."

"Has she been out there this whole time?"

"I asked her to alert me when it was time. It's nothing bad," she added, seeing that Mon-El's body was tensing in alarm. "I just have somewhere to go today. If you're better."

Mon-El stared at her in dismay. "I hope it's back to Krypton, where you'll be safe."

Something complicated crossed her face at the mention of her home world. She shook her head. "It's a prayer day. A holiday. I'm going to the temple."

 _You can't be serious._ The words died on his tongue. Kara was staring at him as if she expected an argument, but there was no mistaking the conviction in her eyes. Mon-El took a deep breath. "Okay. I'll go with you."

Her forehead crinkled at the unexpected answer. "But you're sick."

"Right now I actually feel like could live forever." It was mostly true, but he knew the feeling wouldn't last for very long. "Kara, you just gave me a speech about partners, and us looking out for each other. If you insist on being a rabble-rousing--"

"Mon-El." 

"--seditionist, and a law-breaking fugitive, you're not going to do it alone. I know you're doing what you think is right. I want to help."

"It won't just be for me," she warned. "When people see the Prince of Daxam at the Kryptonian temple, it will mean something to them. Something good. Are you ready for that?"

He bit down on a jaded chuckle, and shook his head. "Come on. Kara, I haven't been ready for any of this."

"You're doing okay," Kara said, and took his hand.

*

Outside the room, Dae-Lin wasn't waiting alone. Caile leapt to attention when the door slid open.

"Your Highness!"

Mon-El waved away the worried expression, and the stream of apologies. "We're going to the Kryptonian temple," he announced, with far more confidence than he felt. "To make tributes to their god."

"We don't exactly look at it like that," Kara said, as she accepted a bundle of fabric from Dae-Lin. It was a simple dress, in the bright colours that he'd last seen her in on their wedding day.

"Dae-Lin told me, sir. We're going with you."

Mon-El and Kara glanced at each other. It was one thing to help Kara disobey his parents, and entirely another to encourage the guards to do the same. "I don't think that will be necessary," he said.

"Yeah, we really can't ask you to do that."

"You don't have to ask," Dae-Lin told her charge, and beside her Caile nodded enthusiastically.

"It will do the people good to see you there, your Highness," he said, then glanced at Mon-El. "I mean, Your Highnesses. We want to help. Nenah does as well."

Mon-El stared at both of them, but their expressions never wavered. Kara was smiling gratefully. Her madness was apparently contagious, and spreading.

He looked down the hallway, thinking. This wing of the palace was as quiet as a museum, but in the main wings there would be no escaping notice, or the eyes of those loyal to his parents. He nodded to the guards.

"Bring me fresh clothing. And we're going to need a shuttle."

"Nenah is working on that," Dae-Lin said. "Let us escort you--"

Mon-El shook his head. "Have her bring it around. Looks like we're climbing out of the window today."

"It'll be fun," Kara said.

*

"I've been thinking," Mon-El said, as Caile piloted their shuttle towards the Lower City. They flew over the neighbourhoods where the nobility lived, circling around the base of the Sun Monument where it stood unchanging, watching over the city.

"About something good, I hope," Kara said.

Her smile was a distraction from his train of thought. Mon-El leaned forward, cradling her jaw with one hand before he kissed her. She pressed her open mouth to his, and Mon-El knew he was smiling in return.

Across the shuttle cabin, Dae-Lin made no pretense of not staring at them, her lined face creased in satisfaction. Nenah sat beside her, wearing the look of ponderous worry that always seemed to be on her face.

"Well?" Kara whispered. Her mouth hovered close enough for him to kiss her again.

"Your opponents' desires are as the sharpest sword," Mon-El murmured.

She blinked at him in surprise. "That's what you were thinking?"

"Yes." It was a famous quote from Daxamite military history, one that Mon-El's father quoted often. "I was thinking about my mother. What she wants, I think, is for things to get back to normal."

"I'm sure she does." Kara gestured beyond the shuttle window, where they were passing some of the oldest settlements on the entire planet. Every generation shored up and extended the existing buildings with what they could acquire, and now the neighbourhood was a warren of crooked walls and cracked roofs that always looked one moment away from caving in. "Do you think that's what they want? For things to stay the way they were?"

"The Trethansi and the Thanagarians might kill us all tomorrow, and then it won't matter."

Kara let out a short, exasperated laugh. "You have a very negative outlook on life."

"Would you believe it was much worse before you got here?" he asked her.

"I would, actually."

"Would you," Mon-El murmured, his mouth grazing softly against her cheek before he kissed her again.

"Sir. Ma'am." Dae-Lin spoke to attract their attention. "We're here."

*

The Kryptonian temple was a jagged crystalline structure, built in the remains of a building made of the traditional Daxamite stone. The crown of the roof glittered in the daylight, seeming out of place on the edge of the alien slums. Two blocks away the Sun Monument stood, as if as a reminder to the aliens that this would always be Daxam. Never home.

Mon-El had never been here before. He had rarely visited the temples of his own religion, despite the lip service that his mother insisted on paying to their own gods. Their arrival had attracted the attention of every being in the vicinity. Kryptonians and Daxamites, but there were other aliens silently watching from neighbouring buildings. There were mixed families, too, more than Mon-El had expected lived in the city. 

Mon-El was used to awe, and fear, and mindless obeisance. He was much less used to the naked distrust on the faces of the beings around him. He was used to being the centre of attention, but not to the feeling of uncertainty that swam through him in the face of so many wondering gazes. He hesitated at the threshold of the building, and Kara poked him gently in the back, as if to remind him that she was there.

"Everyone is staring at us," he muttered.

"That's the point, remember?" She raised her hands, waving to the citizens around them. 

"Prethvi," the crowd returned, in an awed, murmured chorus.

*

The service began with the familiar sight of a canister-full of Kryptonian dirt, being spread across the floor by the hands of the priests. Kara knelt with the other Kryptonians on the bare floor, and Mon-El followed her lead. He watched as she dragged her hands in the streaks of soil, briefly closing her eyes. When she opened them, Mon-El was staring at her.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Kara narrowed her eyes, then shrugged, and returned to whispering a prayer under her breath. Mon-El couldn't hear most of the words. He knelt silently, lulled into a false hypnosis by the quiet, and the reverent whispers all around him.

*

"Mon-El!"

Mon-El felt the shaking before he heard the sounds, a loud cracking almost like an explosion. Around them, the crowd screamed, and moved in all directions. Directly underneath them the temple floor was groaning, shaking hard enough to knock people onto the ground. Mon-El grabbed Kara instinctively, and found that she was doing the same. 

"Are you okay?" 

Kara barely seemed to hear the question. She was turning her head to look all around them, assessing the damage. "I'm fine." 

"No, you're not. You're bleeding." There was a gash on her arm where her dress had torn. He searched her with his eyes, but she seemed otherwise unhurt. That would have to be enough for now. Mon-El stumbled to his feet, clutching tightly to Kara's hand to help her up. "Let's get out of here."

He began to pull her towards the exit, but Kara shook her head, staying stubbornly in place. "We can't. We have to check if everyone's okay."

The explosion of panic in the temple was being pulled back into a vague impression of order. The crowd stood, looking dazedly at each other. Only a few had taken the opportunity to move towards the exit, pulling children and loved ones behind them.

Mon-El tightened his grip on Kara's hand, and looked down at the floor, where a web of tiny cracks had begun to appear.

"Kara, did you not hear the backfire?" It had sounded right after the initial tremors, reverberating like an echoing thunderclap. Mon-El grabbed hold of Kara's wrist, doing his best to keep the dawning terror out of his voice. "There's a displacement cannon somewhere nearby. It could draw enough power to cause a hundred more shocks."

"Rao!" She had yanked her hand out of his, remaining stubbornly in place. "Mon-El, the temple won't withstand that."

Not just the temple. The realisation hit both of them at the same time. Kara's worried expression gave away her racing thoughts as she considered the damaged building, and the houses built haphazardly on every side.

"How long?" she asked, and Mon-El knew, with a sudden, cold certainty, that there simply wasn't time to argue with her.

"Five minutes between charges. Maybe six."

"Do you know how to disarm a displacement cannon?"

Mon-El nodded. It had been years since his weapons classes, but he thought he could manage. "Yeah."

"Get Caile and and Nenah and Dae-Lin. Have them help you search. I'll help evacuate."

He hated the thought of leaving her behind, and she could read the message in his brief hesitation.

"Mon-El," she said, gently. "Do you trust me?"

"Kara. Of course I do."

"Good. I trust you." Kara squeezed his hand tightly, and then let go. "I'm counting on you, Mon-El, and I believe you can do this."

Her words did nothing to ease his fear. "What if you're wrong?"

"Don't be dumb. I'm never wrong."

This was entirely the wrong time for jokes, Mon-El thought, but he didn't get a chance to tell her so before she was herding him towards the door.

"Go. Now."

Mon-El scrambled out of without looking back. Instantly he ran smack into a being headed towards him, running against the swarming crowd.

"Sir!"

"I'm glad that you're here." Mon-El relayed the plan to the three guards in as few words as possible. 

Dae-Lin's face pinched worriedly at the mention of the displacement cannon. "It could be anywhere."

Mon-El shook his head. "I don't think so. I could feel the secondary recoil from inside the temple. It's nearby."

"It would have to be," Nenah said, "if the target's the Kryptonians. If someone wanted to bring down this building, then most likely it's underground."

"No." He'd considered it, but the voice in his memory of his old, war-beaten tutor told him there was another, more obvious answer. "Not down," he said. When aiming for a specific target, always bet on the highest piece of ground. "Up."

Behind him, there was a fresh chorus of terrified screaming. A piece of the roof had caved in, collapsing into a pile of rubble that blocked the passage of the Kryptonians inside. Mon-El couldn't spot Kara, or whether there were any casualties. If he didn't hurry, he knew, it would only get worse.

He took a deep breath, and made a decision. His wife could yell at him later, if later arrived for both of them. "They'll need help. Go help Kara evacuate the temple."

"Sir, it is my duty--" Caile began. 

"You'll help the others," Mon-El said firmly, then looked up at the looming monument casting its unchanging shadow over the city. 

*

There'd been a hover platform built into the monument when it was first built, designed to take patriotic pilgrims to the top. Mon-El didn't know when it had been removed, or why. Now teenagers sometimes climbed it for sport, flashing rude signs at passing shuttle pilots, but it had been years since Mon-El had tried to impress girls with his climbing skills. He flexed his hands, digging his fingers into the nearest handhold.

He'd started counting the seconds in his head the instant he'd left the temple. There was no way to be certain of how accurate he was in his estimates, or of how much time he lost every time a gust of wind threatened his grip. His chest grew tight with the effort.

He was nearly at the monument's crest when he realised that he could hear voices. Two voices, one male and one female. The man sounded closer, near enough to the edge that he might spot Mon-El at any moment. The woman's voice was shockingly familiar.

Mon-El gripped the stone as tightly as he could with his left hand, and reached out with his other to swipe at the feet of the person standing above him. There was a loud yelp, but the advantage of surprise had been enough. The man tumbled head over heels off the edge of the monument, shocked eyes meeting Mon-El's as he fell past.

He didn't have time for regret. Mon-El hauled himself to the top of the structure in one smooth movement, and found himself standing face to face with the last remaining terrorist.

"You found me," Esri said.

Mon-El shrugged, struggling to wipe all the traces of emotion from his face. "Didn't know I was looking for you. But you picked the most public place in Daxam City for your murderous rampage, so."

A flash of anger suffused Esri's face, twisting her face. "They're Kryptonians. They will kill us all first, if we let them."

"Yeah? How come they're not the ones stealing military weapons to use on helpless civilians." Mon-El's mind was racing, thinking back through the last few weeks as the pieces fell into place. "You and your friends tried to kill me."

Esri shrugged. "We hoped it might stop the farce of your wedding."

"That's the first time. What about the second time?" He kept his eyes on Esri, trained for any sudden movements. He could hear the cannon whirring as it generated power, but he couldn't afford to split his attention.

"That time I was just annoyed."

"Esri, we should have talked. I had no idea you felt so strongly about my marriage."

She scowled at the imitation of playfulness in his voice. "Your ego was always the most irritating thing about you, Mon-El. You never believed in Daxam. Never believed in anything."

"This isn't patriotism, Esri. It's insanity."

Mon-El was stalling for time, and he knew that they both knew it. The next blast grew closer and closer, and Esri's bright, zealous eyes said that she relished every second that went by.

He was beginning to doubt his rash decision to come up here alone.

The muzzle of the cannon was pointed directly at the city below. If he couldn't disarm it, he thought, he could get in front of it, and take the brunt of the hit. The beams that hit the city below would be weakened.

No Daxamite could survive a displacement cannon blast. Worse, there would be no one here to stop it from firing again. He was down to one undesirable option.

"I challenge you, then."

Esri shook her head in grim amusement. She didn't waste time with formal words. She simply charged forward, her hands balled into hard fists.

Most of Mon-El's fighting knowledge was theoretical. He'd sparred with tutors, and practice holograms. He'd been in rowdy bar fights, the kind that all the participants would have forgotten by the morning. He'd never had to fight for his life.

Esri had the form of someone who'd been trained by bored, well-paid masters, just as he had.He offered up a series of tentative jabs, but immediately her rage had him on the defensive, ducking sharp, quick hits. 

He was dimly aware of passing shuttles breaking off their paths and circling the monument at a safe distance. He couldn't afford to be distracted. He was losing count of the seconds, but he knew that there couldn't be much time left. A sudden draft of wind caused him to stumble, and Esri immediately took advantage, hitting him so hard that his head rang. He abandoned form, grabbing her by the throat and pulling her down. They hit the platform at the same time, Esri struggling to get out of his grip.

"The gods are on my side," Esri bellowed, thumping him solidly in the chest with her left elbow. Then she bared her teeth, biting down hard on the flesh of his thumb. Mon-El grunted, struggling not to react or let go. The cannon was surging with power. It shook the whole platform, and Mon-El knew he was out of time. 

Esri thrashed in his arms. The world shook, and flashed brightly. Mon-El let go.

The force of Esri's attempts to break free catapulted her backwards, into the air. Mon-El pushed his body low against the platform, as far out of the line of fire as he could manage. Disruption energy was invisible to the naked eye. He only knew Esri was hit when her body began to vibrate, turning into a blur that didn't quite form a full picture. Mon-El didn't look away. In the next instant, she was gone.

He deactivated the cannon with shaking hands. It was burning hot to the touch, scalding and stinging his fingers on the first attempts. He dismantled the outer casing and ripped out the small power core, ignoring the small shocks that rippled through him at the first contact with the smooth metal.

It was done.

The rush of terror that had carried him up the side of the monument was fading, and it seemed as if it took him forever to climb back down again. Every movement was an effort, but Mon-El hung on, moving determinedly back down the face. His breaths came hard, in shallow gasps, but he forced himself to keep going.

Kara would be at the bottom, waiting for him.

The ground was well in sight when his body gave out. He grasped for the next step, but made contact with nothing but air. He fell backwards, his body colliding with the ground in an instant. 

When he opened his eyes there was hard ground underneath him, and the sun in his face. Hands were reaching out, helping him up. Kryptonians, Daxamites, and other aliens clustered around him, asking in hushed tones if he was okay. 

"Mon-El!" 

Kara ran towards him, colliding with heavy force as she grasped him in a tight hug. Mon-El let out a sigh of relief to find her in his arms, breathlessly greeting him.

"Kara. Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, her answer coming out in a rush of breath. "I'm fine. Caile's hurt his leg. Dae-Lin and Nenah are carrying him to the hospital. But almost everyone is fine."

It seemed that all the nearby buildings had been evacuated, and the streets were filled with citizens gathered amid the scatterings of debris. Shuttles flew overhead, flashing the familiar royal colours on their underbellies. 

"I knew you could do it."

"That makes one of us." He didn't mention who he'd found at the top of the monument. There would be time to sort that out later. His knees wobbled, threatening to give out underneath him. He gripped her shoulders for support, and Kara held him up, blinking worriedly.

"Are you okay? Is it the, you know?" She whispered the last into his ear.

"Maybe a little." Maybe a lot. His hands were shaking, craving the feel of her. "Also I think I got slightly electrocuted."

"Electrocuted!" 

"Slightly."

The shuttles had landed in the closest flat and undamaged areas, blocks away. Uniformed beings poured out and moved to surround them, but Mon-El found himself feeling strangely calm. This was simply the Royal Army, demonstrating the will of his parents as they always had. They were marching straight towards Kara, their weapons in hand. The happy, relieved mood of the crowd was beginning to turn ugly.

Mon-El shook his head, fighting for breath. They'd both known when they left the palace that this moment would follow. "Tell them it's okay. That we'll go peacefully. They'll listen to you. Or, I don't know. We can make a break for it. I'm good either way."

He was babbling. In their embrace Kara was a mass of barely-contained energy, as if the brush with disaster had been elating rather than terrifying. Kara smiled at him. "Not just me."

"What?"

"It's not just me that they'll listen to. Everyone saw you. Everyone here knows what you did."

It didn't seem like much, measured against the ages his family had bled Daxam dry. "Maybe."

The officers were marching steadily closer, pushing their way through the crowd. Kara spoke to the crowd in sweet, soothing tones. The crowd finally parted, letting the army through.

"You're a hero," Kara added. A blatantly untrue statement, Mon-El knew, but the fire in her voice told him that she believed it.

*

The guards who escorted them back to the palace were kindly, and almost apologetic. They made no attempt to separate them, and no mention of the jail, simply escorting them into their quarters as if it was any other day.

Kara had grown quiet in the shuttle. Alone in his room, it took Mon-El a few minutes to realise that Kara was shaking just as hard as he was. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, and then his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her greedily, as if they'd been apart for a hundred years.

"You need something?" Kara asked, her voice sweet and teasing.

He breathed out a small puff of laughter, and kissed her again. "You know what I need."

"Yeah," she agreed, and laughed as they tumbled down onto the bed together.

His parents might appear any minute, ready to pass down their sentence, but his touch-hungry body didn't care.

They barely bothered to undress this time. Her dress was torn, covered in the dust of crumbling stone. He pushed it up above her hips, and she sat astride him in his lap, clinging to him with both hands.

 _Wife_ he thought, and didn't realise he'd spoken out loud until he saw an answering smile cross Kara's face.

*

Afterwards they straightened their clothing, and sat side by side. Kara shivered, and he put an arm around her, drawing her close.

"Don't be afraid. We'll get you back to Krypton, if we have to."

"I have to tell you something."

"You can tell me anything," Mon-El said. He watched as she seemed to gather her courage, shifting nervously in place.

She took a deep, steadying breath. "Krypton's dying."

"Of boredom, I assume."

"It's not a joke," Kara said, and he could tell she was serious by the way that she leaned into him. Her voice creaked with emotion. "The earthquakes--my uncle Jor-El thinks the planetary core is unstable. That it could be gone in a year or two."

Mon-El had heard of many natural disasters, but never of a planet simply collapsing. He shook his head. "There must be something that can be done."

"They won't. The council doesn't really believe it's happening. My Uncle Jor-El had to fight just to let them send me here. But if the answer's not on Krypton, then it must be somewhere else. And maybe I can help find it, before it's too late."

 _What if it's already too late._ If Kara thought the words, she didn't say them out loud, and neither did he. 

"I'm supposed to be helping Krypton. But I guess I found something for myself too." She took his hand. Her eyes were shining with sincerity. "I don't need rescuing."

"Would you actually know if you needed rescuing?" Mon-El asked softly, trying to push down the emotion that was choking his throat.

Kara stifled a chuckle, one that turned into a dry cough as his parents entered the room.

"Are you happy? I thought we'd taught you better than this." His mother was glowering at him, and refusing to acknowledge Kara at all.

"Mother. Father. If we hadn't been there, more people would have gotten hurt." Mon-El held on to the defiance in his words, despite his parents' twin glares.

"Only Kryptonians." Rhea shrugged.

"You sound like Esri, Mother. Or perhaps you're the one she was emulating."

"You can't seriously hold me responsible--"

Lar Gand interrupted. "Rhea. We agreed," he said.

His wife broke off her train of bluster, but the cloud of her anger remained. "I should throw the both of you in jail."

"Why don't you?" Mon-El dared to ask.

Rhea glanced briefly at Kara, then turned her attention back to him. "I had the love of our people for years, before she came along."

"Fear isn't love." 

"Perhaps not. But it's a useful tool. But now the people believe they have a beautiful Kryptonian mascot."

Kara bristled. "I'm not a mascot."

"Aren't you?" Rhea asked. "You even have that silly nickname. And if I were to exile you, that ridiculous name would live on forever. If my people need to believe in you as their saviour, then they will. Such a shallow distraction means little to us."

"Not to mention that our son seems attached to you." Lar Gand looked at Mon-El as he spoke, and nodded. "This will be his kingdom one day. Already the citizens are speaking of his bravery."

Lar Gand sounded inexplicably, unexpectedly proud. 

"And you'll restore the rights of the aliens in the city?" Kara asked. "Now that you know that they weren't behind the attempts on Mon-El's life."

"Yes," his father answered, shrugging. "We will."

"For now," Rhea added. "You are stuck with us, child, just as we are stuck with you."

With those ominous words, Rhea turned to the door. Lar Gand gave Mon-El the echo of a sympathetic glance as they left.

*

The room was silent for a long time. Kara twisted her hands into frustrated fists, tangled in her clothing. "We saved hundreds of people today. Kept them from losing their homes."

"Yeah. We did."

"So why does it feel as if we lost something?"

Mon-El shrugged. "My mother has that effect on people. But on the bright side, you don't have to keep sleeping in the jail."

"That's true." She rested her head on Mon-El's shoulder, and sighed.

"You could sleep in my bed," Mon-El told her.

"Also a very good point."

"Not just tonight," he added. "In case I wasn't clear."

"I got it." 

"I was thinking of a slightly longer time frame than that."

"Okay," she whispered fondly.

"It'll probably be more convenient anyway. If we're going to save Krypton together." He paused. "And Daxam."

She poked him gently in the side, smiling. "Together?"

"Of course, together. Unless that whole speech about teamwork was just to get into my pants."

"Mon-El." She tilted her face upwards, bringing her smiling mouth closer to his.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up." 

"Shutting up," he mumbled, leaning into her kiss.

~fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Someday I will remember to do this when I originally post! but I have multifandom social media accounts at sweeter_than (tumblr) and dirty_diana (dreamwidth). Stop by, say hello.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art: The Fountain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12594104) by [mekare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mekare/pseuds/mekare)




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